War Torn

Chapter Eighteen

THE SUN GREW STRONGER DAILY. IN WILTSHIRE THE WOMEN changed into their summer clothes and lay in their back gardens whenever they could, soaking up the light and heat as though it was a rare commodity they had to hoard. In Afghanistan temperatures soared up to 50 degrees and men sheltered from it.‘Is it that much hotter?’ the lads asked. ‘It’s always been hot.’‘It’s bloody hot but you’re used to it now,’ Dave told them.He’d watched his men grow leaner and stronger as they muscled up carrying heavy kit in blinding heat day after day. Some even seemed to grow taller. And they were more proficient. Dave had to impose fewer and fewer of his on-the-spot penalties, like shit duties or press-ups, for lapses at kit inspection.Everyone was falling into the routine of base life and their thoughts of England were fading like old snapshots. Their feelings of longing, loss and love still welled up at unexpected moments then mysteriously subsided. Every man experienced this. No one spoke about it. The new arrivals were no longer getting a hard time just because they were new. And the casualties they had replaced, Buckle and Nelson, were seldom talked about now. Until word came through that Steve Buckle was flying back to the UK at last.Dave phoned Leanne as soon as he heard.‘Remember,’ he warned her, ‘they’ll have dosed him up with extra morphine for the flight so he won’t be himself.’‘But why haven’t they let me speak to him yet?’ Leanne demanded. ‘They keep saying soon, soon.’He was relieved at her anger. It was more like the old Leanne than the anxious, tearful woman he’d been hearing lately. He had one of those sudden and unexpected bursts of homesickness. He was remembering Leanne, plump, loud and funny, sitting in the garden with Steve one summer’s day. They’d been pretending to argue and after a few beers the argument had turned into a comedy act. No aspect of married life was too private to escape their slick one-liners. Dave hoped it wouldn’t be long before they were concocting some good jokes about prosthetic limbs.‘Can’t he talk, Dave? I mean, has he lost the power of speech?’ Leanne asked, her voice cracking and a sob breaking through. The good jokes began to seem a long way off.‘I’ve already told you, Leanne, he can talk but he doesn’t always make sense. Probably because of the morphine.’‘Probably! Dave, is my Steve brain-damaged? Are they sending me back some sort of fucking vegetable?’‘No. But he took the full force of a big blast. He has to recover from the shock.’He tried to distract her by asking about the arrangements that had been made for her in Birmingham.‘We’ve been given an army flat for a week. My mum’s meeting me there. She’ll take care of the boys for me and I’ll mostly go in by myself.’Dave could tell that inside her head she had walked into Selly Oak hospital and experienced her reunion with Steve at his bedside many times. He wondered what it would be like when it finally happened.