From the Can to the Ghan With A Little Empire In Between

I’d only met him that day. William James Robinson. That’s what his name was. I didn’t know that until now, now that he was being sent home in a black bag. I didn’t know his name until I looked at his dog-tags. I hadn’t asked. I had told him he was coming on patrol. I’d never seen a dead body before. It had been a perfectly normal, boring, uneventful day up to that point.

“Fuck,” Hammer said, dropping down next to me.
“What’s up?” I asked, without looking up from my cards.
“I got stuck with the 4 to 6.”
I laughed. Hammer knocked the cards outta my hands. “No, man, this eats shit.”
“Just don’t wake me up too early. I’m going to sleep in late.” I laughed some more.
“Fuck off.”
“Who else is on duty?”
“Stoop has the 2 to 4.”
I picked up the cards and started to shuffle. “Wanna play something?”
“No, let’s go play some badminton before it gets too redders,” he suggested. It was only ten o’clock, so the sun wasn’t too killer yet.
“Yeah ok. Go see if anyone wants to have a tourney. I have patrol in a bit though.”

Only Stoop agreed to play, so I took them on, one against two. Snap, the army photographer attached to our regiment, showed up to take some pictures, followed by the stray dogs we kept on base. In the middle of the game, when some unknown was running over to us, the dogs started fucking barking like crazy.
“Smile,” Snap said, taking a picture of the new guy.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked Stoop, lighting up a cigarette.
“I just got sent here from Bastion.” That was one of the main bases in the desert. “Can I jump in?”
“Whatever,” Stoop replied.
“Get in your civies first,” I told him.
When he had changed and was coming back the dogs starting barking again.
Hammer asked, “So what are you?”
He looked puzzled, “I’m.. uh-”
Stoop jumped in, “Look, Hammer here is from the parachute reg, and Canada over there and I are airborne engineers. So what are you?”
“Oh! Yeah, I’m from engineering.”
“So you’re the same as Stoop and I,” I said.
“Well, I haven’t done my parachuting yet.”
We all stopped to look at him. Hammer said, “So you’re a hat.”
“Fuck you,” the new guy said.
“He’s a fucking crap hat!” exclaimed Stoop, “I’d rather my sister a whore than my brother a crap hat!” We knew the saying, and we all laughed. Well, except Hat.
“Don’t you want to be a para?” I asked, “There’s nothing better than getting paid to throw yourself out of planes.”

At quarter to eleven I went to change into my gear to go on a short patrol with Big Rig and a couple of the Afghanis. Patrols were the best part ‘cus we got to go out and see the life in villages and surrounding areas, and I was driving which was always fucking great ‘cus I’d just floor it and we’d go flying over the dunes. Plus, it was nice to get out ‘cus the base was really small – there were only ten British and twelve Afghans – and generally pretty boring. Things never got too heated, but it was spicy enough to make things exciting every now and then. While we were in town we picked up some shit like apples, cereal, and long life milk.

When we got back to base Stoop, Hammer, Snap, and Hat were sitting around cleaning some light machine guns and long range rifles. Stoop motioned for us to join as he took out a pack of smokes. Big Rig nodded at Stoop to pass the pack to him, and we sat down. They were talking about times when we had gotten drunk at the local pubs in whatever town we were based in, and how we were dicks to the chicks there and just caused a bit of trouble.
“Fuck, I could really go for a Guinness right now,” said Hammer.
“Remember how we used to make bets as to who could be the biggest dick and get slapped in the face first?” asked Stoop.
“Hammer won every time,” I answered.
“And we got thrown out most of the time,” added Hammer. “Remember that time at O’Briens?”
Stoop and I laughed.
“What happened?” asked Hat.
Screambag screamed over to us that lunch was ready. Tinned beef and tinned peas again.
“I’ll tell ya another time,” Hammer said to Hat.

After lunch we all had some shit chores to do like cleaning up the dishes and doing laundry. Then I was supervising a few of the Afghanis while they checked the vehicles for damage, and I tossed a ball for the dogs at the same time. When they started barking I turned around and saw that Hat was walking over.
“So where you from, Canada?” Hat asked me, sitting down.
“Canada.”
“I mean where in Canada?”
“Vancouver.”
“That’s a long way to join the British Army.”
“Yeah. I was in the reserves for a year, but there was no fucking way I was going to be in the Canadian army and be a peacekeeper.”
“How’d you like the reserves?”
“It was so slack. I got away with so much shit!” I laughed.
“Like what?”
“Dumb shit, like never ironing my uniform. The first time it happened, we’re in line up and the commanding officer is coming down the line checking that we are all up to standard. When he gets to me he just stops and stares at my uniform for a second before shouting ‘Morgan! That uniform is shit!’ I just yell back, ‘Yes it is shit, sir!’ He just nods and says ‘Alright then,’ and carried on yelling at everyone else about their uniforms.”
“Either of you wanna play checkers?” Screambag interrupted as he came walking over.
“Yeah ok,” agreed Hat.
Screambag set up the board. They played and Screambag won, so he challenged me, but I didn’t feel like playing, so they started up a second game.
After a bit Hat stood up. “Play for me for a minute, will ya Canada? I gotta go to the loo.”
“The loo?” smirked Screambag, “You’re not in fucking Bastion anymore, Hat. We take shits in plastic bags here.”
Hat walked away. I jumped one of Screambag’s kings.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“We should dig a hole,” I said.
“What?” laughed Screambag.
“It’s too fucking redders. We could dig a hole to make a pool. It was fucking awesome being stationed at Sangin and swimming in the river all the time.”
“Fuck yeah,” he agreed, then shouted over to Big Rig, “Hey! Big Rig! Canada and I are going to dig a hole, wanna help?”
Big Rig shrugged and walked over to us. We grabbed the shovels and picked a spot by the gate that would get both sun and shade, and started digging. Snap came over to shoot some pictures, and he even helped dig a bit. When the hole was about six feet in width and length and four feet deep we stopped. Screambag wondered if we should dig a couple feet deeper, but Big Rig and I figured it would be ok as it was. As soon as it as filled and we were hanging around in it Stoop and Hammer came over to jump in.
“Piss off you slags. This is our hole. You didn’t do shit,” Screambag spat.
“Blow me you fucktard ,” Stoop said, sitting down and putting his feet in.
Stoop turned on the radio. We heard that some guys from a base not far from ours has been shot, but weren’t killed. A while later Hat came over.
“You can’t fucking come in here,” Stoop told him as he lit up a smoke and passed one to Big Rig.
“Go fuck yourself,” Hat replied and started taking his shoes off.
“I’m not kidding,” said Stoop, “You’re a hat. I don’t want no fucking hat contaminating this water. Hat’s are fucking howlers. Dig your own hole.”
We all started laughing. Hat’s face went hard. He looked pissed, but then Big Rig said, “Fuck, Hat, he’s just taking the piss, calm down.” This seemed to have been something Hat hadn’t thought about before, but even so he said “Fuck you,” and walked away. “What a twat,” Stoop concluded.

A bit later I went to find Hat to go over the plans for the new base that we were going to be setting up. I figured he had been brought in to help with this project and so he needed to catch up on how it was going to go down.
When we had finished going over the plans, I told him to get in his gear. I figured it would be good for him to come on a patrol to get an idea of the area. It was Thursday so we had to do another patrol anyway before it got dark since Friday was an Islamic religious day and our day off. We were also going with Hammer, Snap, and Doc, our medic. In town we spoke to different village elders about what they wanted. We gave them money to build things like mosques or wells, and then Doc treated some injured people. The problem with that, though, was that the Afghans thought he could fix everything; they brought anyone and everyone who had any problem to be treated. One of the first people brought in that day was a guy, brought in by his father and uncle, who was missing legs from land mines. Doc couldn’t do much except make sure the wounds were clean. Other people who came in were ok. Just minor shit that was basically a wipe and a slap of a band-aid. But sometimes, like today, someone would bring in a retarded relative to us thinking we could fix them. Since most of them didn’t speak English, or at least only a very small amount, it was hard to tell them that it wasn’t something that could be fixed. But fuck, what are we supposed to do?

On our way back we were ambushed. There weren’t many of them, but even just one is enough. I was driving so I didn’t get to shoot any rounds. I tried to just focus on where I was driving. My heart was pounding. Hat was sitting next to me up front. The other guys were in the back. Once the heat had cooled off and we were almost back at base I said, “That was fucking awesome, everyone ok?” I turned to look at Hat. He was already dead. I didn’t even realize he had been shot.
We had planned to be gone for two hours. By the time we got back to base it had been three. When we pulled in nobody got out of the car. I opened the door to puke, but I stayed in the car. Eventually I reached over to look at his tags. William James Robinson. Blood Type: A. Date of Birth: April 29, 1986. Religion: Church of England. Allergies: Penicillin. I said his name out loud. Then the rest of us got out of the car.