they had become on the front line. Off duty, they were strangely wary of each other. The more confident ones would brag about the things they’d seen and done in Afghanistan, but those who’d had the really tough experiences, like Jess, tended to keep themselves to themselves.
She went through the days in a haze, as if seeing everything through a gauze curtain. She steeled herself to make an appointment with her officer in command and told him she was applying for early release. She had promised Nate. They would live a civilian life – what he called a ‘normal life’ – together.
Her boss set up a further meeting with his boss, the commanding officer, and she filled in a dozen different forms to set everything in motion. The CO tried to persuade her to stay, of course, but could see that she was quite determined and simply ended the conversation with the usual pat phrases about how sorely she would be missed. Chances were, she’d only have to serve three further months after the POTL before starting her seven months ‘resettlement leave’. She could be in her new job at the Ambulance Trust as early as April next year.
Four days later was Remembrance Sunday, where they were to represent the regiment at the annual service held at the town’s War Memorial. For Jess, it was a welcome opportunity to honour James and now Jock, Baz and Millsie. She’d been every year since she’d turned fifteen, first as St John volunteer and later as a rookie soldier. The crowds of people gathered to remember the dead, the proud, stoical faces of the veterans with their medals weighing down fragile frames, the stirring sounds of military bands, the solemn hymns, the two minute silence and the pathos of the bugle sounding the Last Post never failed to move her.
It was miserable and overcast that day, with a spiteful wind and short vicious showers lashing them as they marched down the wide high street, with its handsome Victorian buildings disguised behind tacky shop fronts. This weather was almost enough to make you long for the heat of Kandahar, Jess thought, standing to attention in her combat uniform, perhaps for the last time. The day after tomorrow, she would make her way to Suffolk to see her parents for a few days by the sea before heading back to London for a long weekend with Nate. She found her mouth watering as she thought about the meal her mother had promised to prepare for dinner – roast lamb with all the trimmings.
On their last night at Camp Bastion she’d been sitting side by side on the ground outside her tent with her friend Siobhán, after a long day of packing and debriefings, having a final cigarette before turning in. ‘Vorny’ was a tough Catholic girl from Belfast so different from Jess in so many ways that they’d never have become friends in civilian life. But the two had worked alongside each other during some really horrific moments, and become so close that she felt like a sister.
Their conversation had turned idly to the meals they’d missed on tour. ‘Gotta be an Ulster Fry,’ Vorny said. ‘With the proper soda bread and black pudding. What about you?’
‘Roast lamb, roast potatoes, two veggies and gravy with red currant jelly.’
‘Not even a proper fry-up is gonna make up for missing you lot, though,’ Vorny said. ‘And the lads.’
‘Me too,’ Jess had replied, keeping her eyes to the ground. If she looked at Siobhán she might start to cry. ‘Tough one, that.’
They’d both gone quiet, then Jess lit up another cigarette. ‘We’ve had some good times though, eh?’
‘What are you most proud of?’ Vorny asked.
‘Finding that bleed under Gav’s armour,’ Jess said. ‘I was so scared he was going to die.’
‘But you saved his life, didn’t you? Bloody good call that was.’
Gavin had been moaning about the minor foot injury he’d sustained, and they’d been busy attending to other more serious casualties when Jess noticed that the kid had stopped complaining and begun to go pale. She knew immediately that something else was wrong, something they’d missed. Checking him out, she discovered that a bullet had entered just beside his armpit, in the crack between the plates of Osprey body armour, and was probably causing all kinds of unseen havoc in his chest.
‘Sucking chest wound, possible internal bleeding,’ she’d yelled at once, applying a chest seal to the hole before checking his back for an exit wound. ‘Cat A, he needs to be out of here urgently.’
Only later, when she heard that Gavin had emerged safely from surgery with no anticipated long-term effects, did she realise that she had saved her soldier and fulfilled her promise to James. It made her feel wobbly all over again, just thinking about it.
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘The time we nearly died in that field, that was probably my worst moment,’ Vorny said.
‘Christ, me too. That was a bad one.’
They’d been caught in ferocious cross-fire trying to get a couple of casualties to the helicopter and the pilot had pulled away at the last moment, realising that it was too dangerous to land. The lads carrying the stretchers had managed to get down into a ditch, but Vorny and she, lugging the men’s heavy kit, had fallen behind. When the crackle of firing started, all they could do was drop to the ground, face down, below the level of the meagre, patchy crop, and pray they couldn’t be seen.
‘I thought we were going to die.’
The firing seemed to go on for hours, but was probably only about ten minutes. They were completely pinned down with their faces in the dust, unable to make any move or noise for fear of attracting Taliban fire. All those gunmen had to do was tilt their barrels fractionally, raking the field with bullets, and it would have been all over.
At that moment, Jess felt quite sure she would never get out of that field alive and in her head began apologising to Nate, her mum and dad, and Jonathan for being so wilful as to insist on this insane venture. She remembered the letter she’d written, the one they would receive if she died: ‘Forgive me. It’s something I just have to do …’ Her chest felt as though she was being sat on by an elephant. Then she realised she was hyperventilating, and knew that she had to concentrate on something to stop herself panicking and passing out.
And then … oh God, then … she’d lifted her eyes and seen the poppy.
Most of the crop was dried out and dull brown, but right in front of her nose was a late bloom, a green stem topped by a single red flower, and she fixed her eyes on it, like a totem. She noticed how the papery crimson petals were stained dark, like dried blood, where they joined the stem, how at its centre the delicate white stamens fluttered on their stalks. The seed head itself, the part of the plant that held the white liquid harvest which had so much to answer for, the drug that drove this war, was beguilingly beautiful, with an intricately symmetrical star pattern on the top and elegant vertical lines down its bowl-shaped sides.
The crackle of fire started again, interspersed with terrifying booms of exploding grenades. A volley whistled a few inches above them and she’d dropped her head to the ground, closing her eyes and praying fervently to a God she had never really believed in. When the firing stopped, she reopened her eyes and looked for the poppy.
It had gone.
For a moment she thought that she must have moved, but then her eyes caught the green stem, still in front of her, trembling from the assault. It was then she realised that the flower – just beside where her own head had been a few seconds before – had been blown off by a bullet and shattered into a thousand fragments.
She could hear a faint keening sound, and thought
