Never Broken (8 page)

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s the weeks passed, despite everyone’s best efforts life at camp seemed to get tougher. I missed Milly and Jamie desperately. Some people may judge me for being a mum in a war zone, but my argument is what made me different from all the dads with babies and toddlers who were also serving out there? But it’s fair to say that as a woman I was very much in the minority and as the only mum in my working group, there were times when I felt isolated as the other girls couldn’t truly understand how I was feeling.

Debbie was in her late thirties and she had no desire to be a mum, and Sally also didn’t want any kids at that point in her life, although she later became a mother. Although they’d often ask about Milly, they couldn’t truly understand how my maternal instinct left me aching to be reunited with her. I thought I’d cope better than I did but it was like a physical pain. When I chose to have a child while serving in the Armed
Forces, I knew that one day I would face the prospect of leaving her, but the reality of it was much harder than I could ever have imagined. However, it was hard for the dads too. Being a woman didn’t make me any different, it’s just that, as a woman, I felt able to express my feelings much more than the men did for they’d often bottle it up.

Nevertheless, I carried a deep sense of guilt that I’d left her and that’s something I still carry to this day. I never talked about Milly when I was on duty as it made the agony of being away from her too raw and I had to concentrate all my energies on the job at hand. During work times I had to force myself into Army mode and focus on the job I was trained to do and that included suppressing my ‘mum’ mode. But during free time everyone talked about life back home and being a mum led me to form a strong friendship with another clerk, Corporal John Lewis. Tall, bald and from Grimsby, he was married with one son, although he and his wife definitely wanted more, and we bonded over stories about our kids and better halves. Because his tent was directly next door to ours, he became our male escort after the laundry was taken and no one wanted to take any chances.

Letters and welfare parcels from home were central to the bond John and I forged. Collecting your post every couple of days was hugely significant, especially if you knew something was on its way out to you, as it gave you something to look forward to. Most of my post came as ‘Blueys’ – flimsy blue pieces of paper which would arrive after a two-week delay. And Jamie was amazing, writing to me daily. Every week he’d send a letter enclosing photos of Milly and little drawings he’d done with her. Nikki would regularly send me my favourite strawberry-flavoured jelly sweets, as well as a letter with all
the latest gossip. In one package another friend sent me a female blow-up doll to join our ‘women-only’ tent. ‘She’ was soon nicknamed ‘Mustafa Shag’ by one of the lads!

While the funny gifts gave everyone a laugh, it was the letters that we all looked forward to the most. Often I’d sit down outside the post room with John and we would open our Blueys together before sharing our news from back home. Everyone took an interest in the drawings and letters from each other’s kids – it was a little piece of normality and joy to share. I remember showing John a book Milly’s nursery had sent me after she made it for me.

Then, when Mother’s Day came, Jamie sent me a clip frame of photos of Milly and some art he’d done with her. I collected my parcel just before starting work with a real rough, tough soldier called Dave. As soon as he saw the wrapping, he said: ‘Are you going to bubble?’ which is what they call crying in the Army. I said: ‘No, I don’t have a clue what it is,’ then I opened it and I just bawled. Dave half-groaned and half-laughed and then said: ‘I knew you were going to do that!’ He still wanted to see my latest photos of my little girl, though, so he was a big softy, really.

Jamie would also email me photographs of Milly all the time. As he’d been deployed before, he knew how important the post and parcels were as they connected you with your life back home. He also knew how little luxuries make a massive difference when you are on deployment, so the minute I needed anything he’d get it straight in the post – including a dressing gown, and some crisps or other treats. One time I ripped my pajamas so I emailed him, saying: ‘please can you send me some new ones’ and he went straight to the shops and it was done right away.

A massive pastime was poker as the camp was dry and it was an easy way for people to occupy their minds. We played for POGS, which is a form of plastic currency as no one used small change on camp. If you paid for something at the Naafi using a dollar note, instead of getting cents you’d be handed POGS, which were little round discs that had the amount such as fifty cents or seventy-five cents written on them; this made sense as logistically the Army would struggle to carry enough loose change to support camp with so many people coming and going.

For each hand we’d play five cents in POGS, which was little more than two pence. John tried his hardest to teach me but I was rubbish. One day when we were playing I was completely down in the dumps and John asked: ‘What’s up, Hannah?’ I told him that it was Milly’s birthday the following day and although I’d sent a card, I just felt awful I wasn’t going to see her. John and some of the chefs at the canteen then hatched a plan and decided to bake an iced cake, which said: ‘Happy Birthday Milly’. They all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and we celebrated, albeit from thousands of miles away. Of course that had me in floods of tears that they could do something so touching. There was no such thing as Skype on camp and none of us ever sent photos home – I only wanted to do that when I was safe and sound back home. But we could ring home. You’d get thirty minutes every two weeks to use on a phone card. But the lads were amazing and a lot of them would let me use up any spare minutes they had to ring Milly, which was such an extraordinarily generous thing to do.

As well as admin one of my other roles was guard duty at the local prison – a vast, grey concrete bunker on the furthest
perimeter of Camp Charlie. Women soldiers were in short supply and I was told someone would be ‘dicked’ (Army slang for picked for the job) unless there was a volunteer. Keen to get out of the office, I put my hand up.

Each morning I’d be picked up by a Sergeant Major in a Land Rover and driven over to the prison, five minutes’ drive from the centre of Camp. By the time we arrived, shortly after dawn, there would be a long queue of burka-clad women waiting to see their husbands. Some of them simply wanted to come and visit, but others had an ulterior motive – they wanted to build bombs or smuggle other contraband. Blowing up the prison so they could get out was the ultimate goal for some extremists, so they would sneak in a baby’s nappy, a switch or a tiny amount of explosives. It would all come in dribs and drabs.

Due to their beliefs, the women could not be searched by men and that’s where I came in: makeshift tents were set up, where the females would all come to be checked, one by one. Translators would stand by us as we conducted searches, helping us tell the women what they needed to do. We quickly realised that when the translators didn’t turn up for work, we needed to have our wits about us as it might be a sign the camp was going to be attacked. You’d still give the women a nice smile and motion to them to take off their shoes, or open their bags. Sometimes you could sense the ones who hated us and it was a game of cat and mouse.

Once, when I bent down in an unguarded moment to pick up a woman’s shoes instead of getting her to hand them to me she grabbed hold of me by the hair and started swinging me around, leaving me screaming for help. Just outside the search tent were Welsh Guards with machine guns and it lasted just
seconds, but it was enough to shake me up. The minute they entered, she let go and so despite her vicious assault there was no retaliation. Her punishment was that she wasn’t allowed in that day – we had to be better people than they were – although I never made that mistake again.

There are certain things, like that incident, that really hit home but you have a little cry, dust yourself off and then get on with it. But it was our world and there was no escaping it so the only way to survive was to go numb to what we were being subjected to at the time. That’s why when they get back home it’s often hard for soldiers to adjust – they’ve had to switch themselves off for six months in order to get through. Many of the women brought babies or toddlers to the prison with them. Kids are just kids and they don’t care if you are in the Army or not. They’d smile merrily and as a mum I always wanted to be as gentle and friendly as I possibly could.

But the reality of how vital our role became was brought home to me during one routine search when a mother brought along her child, wearing combat trousers. There were so many little pockets it took ages to search him and to ensure he wasn’t scared, I remember tickling him and talking to him and smiling to put him at ease as I checked each and every one of them. Then, inside a pocket I found something and pulled out a tiny switch with a little wire. Initially I thought: ‘What is that?’ assuming it might be a toy. Then, as I examined it more closely, it slowly dawned on me that it could be something far more sinister. I shouted to the armed guard, who came in and then called his Sergeant Major. He looked at it, then turned to her and said, ‘This is potentially a switch so you are not coming in today.’ That was it – she was turned away and the switch, which we feared could potentially be used
in a bomb, was confiscated. She was entitled to her human rights and visiting rights just as we are over here, so the guard commander decided to let her go.

I was appalled and sickened that any mother would use her child, her own flesh and blood, as a smuggling mule, especially when it was potentially such a horrifying reason. There was no outward sign whatsoever of what she was concealing and there’s no doubt she would have come back, although I personally never saw her again. The flip side of it is that sometimes these women did things involuntarily. She may not have wanted to do it – someone could have threatened to kill her child, so you can’t judge when you don’t know the full story. I have no doubt some of the people did things because they were bad and because they believed in the cause they were fighting for at the time. Equally, others were threatened or put under pressure and they felt they had no choice.

One of the more bizarre aspects of the prison guard duty was that the women were allowed to bring in pans of food for the prisoners. We were supplied with hand-held metal detectors so we could scan all the food and if we had any doubts we would stir it up with a spoon, or even feel around inside with gloved hands to make sure nothing was concealed. One day a woman showed up with a boiled dog’s head in a metal dish, still with its eyeballs intact, which made me want to retch. Because its skull cavity was such a good potential hiding place we had to get the gloves and metal detector on the dog and it stank, which wasn’t nice at all.

Once they were all inside the prison we would stand on concrete plinths to guard throughout the visiting time and watch individual visitors. Each family would sit on mats and have picnics huddled in groups and we’d each be tasked with
watching certain groups to ensure there was no threat or to diffuse fights breaking out because of hierarchical disputes as there was a definite pecking order among the detainees. Fortunately I never got caught up in one in the prison, but there were protocols in place. The armed guards on all the doors would grab the back of the soldiers body armour who was on guard inside – which would have included myself – then they’d pull you outside, walking backwards, so you faced the enemy at all times and then they would shut the doors and and lock you all in for the duration of the fight.

Even back on camp if you were on guard duty there were still risks. The camp was vast and at night some areas of it were pitch black, where there were no tents, so you’d be completely alone. One of my greatest fears was being caught on my own in one of those areas in a mortar attack at night. I don’t know what I would have done. I was told there had been a sniper taking pot shots so everywhere you went, you had to wear body armour, and jogging around the perimeter was banned as a result.

One of the lads had a legendary escape near the perimeter boundary that became the stuff of camp folklore. He was standing having a cigarette, waiting for a transport vehicle, when someone fired a mortar bomb that, by chance, hit the ground right next to him. Though it left a crater, incredibly it didn’t detonate. It was a miracle he lived to tell the tale and his survival spread like wildfire around camp. A real brush with death, it totally shook him up. The bomb disposal team had to go out and do a controlled explosion. It was unbelievable. But incidents like that made us all realise that if it’s not your time, it’s not your time.

Three months into my deployment I had two days of
Operational Stand Down – which meant I had completely free time. A group of us, including Sally and John, decided to take one of the regular military flights that went to Kuwait to get away from the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the camp. I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep the night before, knowing I was going to get out of the shithole of camp. Of course I’d rather have been going home, but this was the next best thing.

But first we had to get out of Basra. It was full kit and helmets for the two-hour flight, again under cover of darkness. Landing at the US Air Base in Kuwait called Camp Arifjan at 5am, we headed straight for breakfast after a quick change and a wash. We were all caught up in a holiday atmosphere. Relief washed over me that I was away from Iraq – albeit for just forty-eight hours. Camp Arifjan was probably the most luxurious and vast I’d ever seen. Compared to our facilities, the US cookshop was like a five-star hotel and the breakfast buffet had everything and anything you could think of, just like a five-star Hilton. I chose sausage, pancakes and syrup and sat in air-conditioned luxury within a proper building, not a stifling tent.

By contrast, the meals at our British camp were notoriously terrible as everything was shipped in from outside Iraq for there was a threat of poisoning if it was local. Staples were tinned fruit salad and while there was a hot breakfast option of bacon and eggs, because the cookhouse was in a tent there were flies everywhere. The most appetising thing on the menu was the cereal miniboxes flown in from the UK and served with UHT long-life milk. You’d struggle to survive more than a hastily eaten meal as the air conditioning buckled under the heat from the stoves. Dinners were often stews made from
canned meat and always there were loads of chips. Whenever a delivery came in there would be salads and fresh fruit, but here in the US camp everything was on offer, like an all-you-can-eat banquet. The British camp was a poor relation in comparison. Our two main luxuries were a small Naafi, which had a limited selection of crisps and sweets, and a professional Mr Whippy ice cream machine, which boosted morale more than anything else when it was flown in. They’d pour the mixture in the top and the machine did the rest. In the searing heat it was a massive treat. The Americans had Starbucks coffee, burgers, pizza and pretty much everything you could wish for, which was extraordinary. After we’d eaten so much our stomachs hurt, we decided to leave the base, get a taxi and hit the malls.