Never Broken (2 page)

My next flash of reality was waking up to see some medical staff looking over me. I kept trying to tell them I couldn’t see properly and it frightened me, but I don’t know if any words came out for they didn’t seem to pick up what I was saying. At this point I became increasingly frustrated that no one seemed to understand. I also remember people kept asking me questions – ‘Hannah, can you hear me?’ ‘Hannah, do you know where you are?’ – but I couldn’t see or hear properly to answer them and that made me even more confused. Because
my brain was swollen and bruised, I suspect that what I thought were words were not what I was articulating. It’s quite scary that what seems like a reality can actually be something quite different to what those around you are experiencing. I spent hours in this nightmarish state of hallucination, barely clinging to life.

My first true sense of coming back to reality came a day and a half after the blast, when I was still in the field hospital. By then I’d had two lots of emergency surgery to clean my shrapnel wounds and remove the poles that had pierced my body. My friend and camp roommate, Corporal Sally Allison, was sitting next to me and she smiled at me as I opened my eyes. Unfortunately, as she leaned over me to say hello, she knocked my catheter, which was full, and covered herself with wee. So, as I woke up, I started laughing, which broke the tension of the moment quite a bit. After she said hello, I reached up to touch the left side of my face as it was throbbing. To my dismay I realised countless stitches snaked up my cheek and past my eye, which they’d operated on as quickly as possible after the blast to minimise scarring. They had also stitched my hip and stomach up and my left leg was in an open half-cast as the swelling was so bad that surgery to try and save it at that time was impossible. I didn’t particularly register my leg – all I wanted to do was to see my face.

‘Sally, can you get me a mirror from somewhere?’ I asked her.

She replied: ‘Hannah, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

But I’m stubborn and I insisted: ‘Sally, I really need to see what’s happened to me. I want to see what’s happened to my face.’

After looking at one of the doctors, who nodded, she got
me a hand-held mirror. I remember just staring for ages in silence: I looked like a monster. A pole had pierced through my left cheek, leaving me with only 20 per cent vision in my eye. The impact of the rubble and stitches had left me swollen beyond recognition. I was so shocked, drugged and concussed that I stated quite matter-of-factly: ‘I look like the Bride of Frankenstein.’

I didn’t cry, but internally I was gutted. ‘Oh, my God, is my face going to stay like this?’ I thought. But I also felt a weird sense of relief for I had feared that maybe I’d dreamt it all. Looking in the mirror I could recognise that I hadn’t gone mad, I wasn’t trapped in some kind of hallucination or nightmare, something really had happened to me as I had the injuries that proved it to myself. The doctor came and told me that as soon as I was stable enough I was going to be flown back to the UK.

Later that day, he came to see me again and for the first time I asked him: ‘What have I done to my leg?’ I was aware there had been a lot of activity down there but I couldn’t really feel any pain as they’d given me so many drugs.

I was shocked to the core when he said: ‘Hannah, you really need to pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you: there is a chance that we might not be able to save your leg.’

I refused to acknowledge what he was saying to me. Recognising I was in denial, he gently repeated himself. At this I started shouting: ‘No! No!
No
! I’m saving my leg. You’ve
got
to save my leg!’

There was no way I was going to lose it. He was lovely, listening to me, and I could see him clearly weighing up the options.

He then said: ‘OK, Hannah, but if we don’t amputate you
are going to fly back to the UK and you are going to have a major operation when you get back.’

And I said: ‘OK, I’m willing to do that’ and that was the end of the matter. I never thought about it again; I just thought I’d fly back to Britain and it would be fixed. In order to protect myself from the horror I refused to consider any alternative – I couldn’t allow myself to comprehend the alternative: becoming a war amputee. If I allowed myself to think about it that made it real, so I refused to think about it or discuss it with anyone further.

In the hours before I flew home, I was well enough to look at my leg for the first time. I still had a leg and above the ankle was smooth, unmarked skin, but from just above the ankle down was a block of dark, purple swelling which was unrecognisable as a limb. What was once my foot looked like a breezeblock at the end of my leg; it was cut to pieces. They’d cleaned it up by the time I saw it, but still there was blood everywhere and it looked pretty horrendous. It was like I was wearing an ankle boot of disgustingness. Fascinated, I stared at it for ages, thinking: ‘God, that’s really malformed!’ Even when I saw the shocking reality before my very eyes, I told myself: ‘It’s just an op. They can fix it.’ Somehow I convinced myself it was a broken bone. ‘I’ll have six weeks in plaster, have a few plates, and then I’ll get on with my life and forget about all this,’ I told myself. It was at the time an act of self-preservation as I was still unable to comprehend the horror of what I’d gone through. It would take me years to do that.

As I lay in my hospital bed waiting to be wheeled out onto the tarmac to fly home, I thought the biggest irony of all was I shouldn’t be there. I’d taken someone else’s place: someone else’s destiny. Just forty-eight hours before, one of my friends
in Iraq, Corporal John Lewis, had asked if I would take over his shift as guard commander. Nobody wanted to do guard duty. It was an absolutely shit job and one of the most hated on camp. The main guardroom had no air conditioning, you got no sleep for the entire twenty-four-hour shift – unless you snatched an hour here and there on a mattress – and it was the worst duty you could get on camp, apart from cleaning the Portaloos. There was a huge amount of responsibility attached to it as you had to sign for all the live rounds, which were then issued to the guards. You then commanded those under you to ‘load’ and ‘unload’ at the start and end of the duty. Every single bullet that anybody had in their magazine or fired had to be accounted for and the buck stopped with you. Signing for one hundred rounds, any of which could have killed somebody, was a huge weight on my shoulders. If a bullet was lost, there had to be an investigation. Getting away for food and drink was also an issue and the twenty-four hour shift left you utterly exhausted. I hated the idea of it, but when John told me there was a chance he could get a flight a day early to be home with his kids I had no hesitation in volunteering to replace him.

‘I’ll do it if they give you a seat on an earlier plane,’ I said. When a seat became available, I was delighted for him. ‘Right, well, pack your bags, you lucky sod!’ I told him. ‘Your tour is over.’

He hugged me tightly as he was so excited. ‘I owe you one,’ he said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I replied. To me it wasn’t a big deal as I was going to be stuck in Iraq anyway, but to him it meant leaving the shithole of Camp Charlie behind and getting back to his loved ones for good. He’d served his six months; he’d
done his time. He was fed up and he desperately wanted to go home and see his family and kids. I understood where he was coming from. My daughter Milly had celebrated her second birthday shortly before I was deployed, but during the two and a half months I’d served so far, I’d missed Mother’s Day and I ached to see her and my husband, Jamie. The truth is, as a mum you deal with a lot of guilt for not being there for your child – you miss so many milestones, moments you can never get back. But then so do the dads.

Before leaving home I told myself that Milly was so young she wouldn’t remember me not being there, but when I got out to Iraq and the realities of war had kicked in, and when I became wise to what war really was about, I felt regret for being so quick to leave her. Although I always knew the time away from her was going to be a big deal, what I hadn’t factored in was that I could lose my life. Also, I hadn’t taken into account the terror on a daily basis. I thought: ‘If I don’t get out of here I’ve robbed my daughter of a mum.’ While I had immediate regrets, it could just as easily have been my husband Jamie in this position and then our daughter might have been robbed of a dad. The same can be said of any of the men and women who served alongside me, so there’s no right answer. Mums and dads are equally important to their children yet we both have a role in our Armed Services. While there’s been a big debate about it, both should be able to serve on the front line.

That’s not to say they want to be there. No matter how rigorous your training, regardless of whether you are a mum or dad, a new recruit or veteran, it’s virtually everyone’s dream on long-term deployment to get back home and see your kids and family. I wanted to do everything I could to help John do
that for I knew had it been the other way round somebody would have done the same for me.

Guard duty started at 6pm after I’d already done a full day’s work. Staff had to meet at the guardroom and the shift ended at 6pm the next day. The Garrison Sergeant Major came, issued me the bullets, gave me a ‘make sure you don’t fuck up’ briefing and then left me in charge.

I was really lucky as working alongside me as my second-in-command was Lance Bombardier Karl Croft, who was highly experienced. Originally, he was to have taken the Guard Commander role, as he was more senior than John. But as I wore a higher rank than both of them, the commander role transferred to me. That meant Karl became my second-in-command. Although I knew what I was doing, Karl was level-headed, experienced and a really nice guy, so he was great to have onboard. I also made sure everyone on duty was paired off, as guarding the periphery of camp could be a dangerous place. One of my deep-seated fears was to be stranded alone in the pitch-black of the furthest reaches of the base during a mortar attack and being blown up completely alone, with no one to hear or help me. I didn’t want that to happen to them.

Just before we started the shift there was some gunfire in the distance. Sometimes shots were fired because there was a celebration in Basra, which you could see in the distance from Camp Charlie, but we couldn’t be sure if it meant there were insurgents (rebel fighters against the new Iraqi government, who also targeted the coalition armies who were helping them) in the area, so we were immediately on heightened alert. Karl helped me organise who would be doing what: pairs in two-hour rotations throughout the night and following day,
and each shift was written on a white board just inside the Portacabin where the guardroom was.

Briefing the lads, I told them: ‘This is where you are supposed to be, and when you are supposed to be doing it. Don’t fuck me around and don’t fuck up. Apart from the first rotation, the rest of you can knock off for an hour, send your emails and make your calls and then come back.’

Family is everything when you are on tour. The reality is that while these lads do an amazing and courageous job, their families are their lifeline: they want to call their mums, speak to their wives and kids on the phone and pick up their emails or a parcel from home. Anybody who has served in a war zone knows and respects that, from the lowest to the most senior rank.

When the lads were dismissed I returned to the guardroom alone as we had what was known as an ‘Occurrence Book’. I needed to record the distant gunfire so that the next team on duty would be aware of what had gone on and I also needed to make necessary radio checks. Once that was done, I briefly popped outside to have a cigarette with Karl, where we made chit-chat. I remember saying, ‘I hope we’re going to have a quiet night’. Then I walked back inside and in a split second my life changed for ever.

The building took a direct hit from a mortar bomb, obliterating it and leaving me alone and trapped underneath, but the next moments are a complete blank. For years I would get really frustrated as I wanted to fill in the gaps of what happened. I know there’s no point in me straining to try anymore as I’m never going to get it back. Even today the only way I can comprehend what happened is through my injuries.

I left Iraq on an Aero Med plane, which is literally a flying hospital, exactly two days after the blast. All flights left Basra at night as the cover of darkness meant there was less risk of being attacked by a missile. I was pushed out onto the tarmac by a one-on-one nurse, who was to care for me all the way home, just like you’d get in an Intensive Care ward. Lying on my back due to my injuries, all I could see was the stars in the night sky. The air was warm and balmy, with just the sound of voices in the background as they prepared the flight.

Just before I boarded, my Garrison Sergeant Major came to see me: the highest non-commissioned officer in the camp. I was so off my face on painkillers, the only thing I slurred to him was: ‘It’s a really good job I had my bikini line waxed the night before I got blown up!’ When the nurse told me this later, I was mortified. Apparently he took it well, although understandably he went slightly puce and muttered, ‘Very good.’

As I was wheeled inside the plane I started crying, saying: ‘What if they mortar us as I can’t get off the stretcher?’ ‘My nurse said: ‘No – you will be OK.’ I felt such profound terror that they decided to sedate me. Halfway through the flight I stirred when the plane’s engines seemed incredibly noisy. Military planes aren’t insulated in the same way as commercial planes. I looked sideways and saw someone with plasters and bandages all over his legs and face: it was Karl Croft. He’d managed to come on as a walking casualty rather than on a stretcher. It was comforting to see him there, even if he did look a bit like an Egyptian mummy.

My nurse patted my hand and said: ‘Go back to sleep. Everything’s OK. We’re on the way home.’

As I drifted off into a deep sleep, my thoughts turned to
being back home and with my family. My last memory before blacking out is of seeing Milly’s smiling face in my mind’s eye and an overwhelming feeling of relief I was heading home.