Man Down Read online

  Man Down

  Nathan Burrows

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part II

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Dedicated to those who serve, and to those who support them.

  Author’s Note

  This book contains a lot of terminology that is specific to the British military, and also to the medical professions.

  For readers without a military or medical background, at the back of the book is a glossary for further information on terms used which may be unfamiliar.

  Part I

  1

  The bullet was travelling at over seven hundred metres a second when it hit Private Robert Thomas from the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. It weighed about the same as a fifty pence piece and was tumbling through the air when it smashed through the shrapnel-proof part of his body armour. Impacting just underneath his right collar bone, it missed the toughened Kevlar plate covering his sternum by inches. If it had hit the plate, Private Thomas would have ended up on the floor with a hell of a fright and a bruise across his entire chest. But it hadn’t, so the bullet tore through the body armour and kept on going.

  As it penetrated the body armour, the bullet flattened, producing a small mushroom shaped fragment which increased the surface area of the projectile. It also increased the damage to Thomas's soft tissues, ripping through his skin and pectoral muscle and pushing everything out of its way. Shattered fragments of his body armour, uniform, and scraps of mud and dust floating in the air rushed into the large vacuum in his chest that the bullet created as it tore through him. The mushroom missed his subclavian artery by a couple of millimetres, tearing a tiny nick in the lining of his right lung before transferring all its force into a massive punch to his shoulder as it impacted his scapula.

  The punch was the first thing Private Thomas registered as he flew backwards through the air before slamming into the ground. A second after he hit the dirt, he heard a gunshot echoing through the poppy field his patrol had just entered. He lay still, trying to catch his breath while around him the other members of his patrol started moving, seemingly in slow motion. The next thing he felt was an excruciating pain in his right shoulder which was followed by shouting from other members of his patrol. The edges of his vision turned grey as darkness closed in, and the only thing on his mind was one word.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Contact!’ Staff Sergeant Martin Partridge screamed at the top of his voice, diving to the ground as soon as he heard the shot echo around the field and saw Private Thomas go down. Wriggling into the dirt as fast as he could, he slipped off the safety catch of his SA-80 combat rifle and brought the light enhancing SUSAT sight up to his right eye. Partridge scanned the low single storey buildings two hundred metres in front of the patrol, and while he could see people running around in reaction to the gunshot, he couldn’t see any of them looking over a gun back at him. He shouted ‘Contact’ again just in case any of the fuckwits in his patrol hadn’t heard him the first time around or missed the sound of the gunshot and the sight of one of their own going down at the same time. They might be fuckwits, but they were his fuckwits and someone shooting at them was a personal insult to his way of thinking.

  Partridge watched the other members of the patrol crawling through the dirt trying to find cover in the dusty ground, which was not easy in the middle of a poppy field. There was a natural dip in the ground about twenty-five metres to his left where two of his patrol had found a spot out of any line of sight. To his right, the platoon medic, Corporal Alfie Rowley, and machine gunner Lance Corporal Craig Winters were trying to make themselves as small as possible behind a low mud wall. After a quick look back down the sights towards the buildings, Partridge scrambled through the dirt to the mud wall and rapped his knuckles twice — hard and without sympathy — on the top of Winter’s helmet.

  ‘Get your fucking machine gun out and train it on that fucking village!’ he shouted. ‘And do it fucking sharpish. If you see anyone with anything that looks like a gun, put some rounds down. Yes?’ Winters looked at him blankly as if he hadn’t heard him. Partridge knocked hard again on top of the helmet before leaning into Winter’s face and shouting, ‘Winters? Yes?’

  The young soldier blinked as if realising that he should be doing something more productive than hiding behind a wall and got to his knees, his trembling hands trying to set down the legs of the bipod. Partridge looked at him sympathetically, knowing that being under fire was a new experience for Winters. There’d be time for a hug later. Much later.

  Winters got the legs of the light machine gun locked into position and started to shuffle towards the edge of the wall to get a good line of sight on the buildings without exposing himself to any further fire from the village. Partridge would never tell him, but Winters was already doing much better than Partridge had the first time he came under fire in Iraq in 2003. Partridge had spent a good ten minutes hiding behind a large metal storage container as Chinese 107mm rockets rained down on them before he managed to sort himself out.

  As he turned to the medic, Partridge grabbed Rowley’s shoulder and squeezed. He nodded towards the supine figure of Private Thomas, a good twenty metres beyond their cover.

  ‘Right, Doc. As soon as Winters has got his shit in a sock with that LMG we’re going to run over there, grab an armpit each, and drag Thomas back here pronto. Then we’ll see how good a medic you really are.’ Glancing towards the dip where the rest of his platoon were taking cover, he could see one of them lying flat on the lip looking down the sights of his SA80 rifle towards the village. The whip antenna of the aerial from the radio that one of the other soldiers carried was swinging from side to side. With any luck, he’d be calling in some air support. The chances of getting any were remote when only one shot had been fired, but if there was anything in the area, they might get lucky. Partridge brought his rifle up to his eye and into the aim to have another look at the village, making sure that Winters had indeed got his shit in a sock and was covering the village with his light machine gun. He patted Rowley on the shoulder. ‘Right sunshine, let’s do one.’

  Rowley got to his feet and took a deep breath. Seeing that Partridge had already started off across the field towards the lifeless looking body of Private Th
omas, Rowley ignored the shaking in his thighs and went after the Staff Sergeant. Trying to keep as low as possible to the ground, he got to within ten feet of Private Thomas when he sensed, rather than saw, a puff of dust in the ground between him and Partridge followed by a loud ‘zing’. A second later, the sound of another shot boomed around the poppy field.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he muttered as he reached Partridge, who was already trying to drag Thomas back to the small wall which was their only chance of proper cover. Grabbing a handful of Thomas's uniform, Rowley was only vaguely aware of the other members of the patrol returning fire. Lots of it. The need for single aimed shots which had been drilled into them throughout their training had gone right out of the window. The deep bark of the Minimi machine gun was deafening as it spat rounds towards the village, and the rapid staccato of an SA80 rifle on full automatic accompanied the sound of the machine gun.

  ‘Fucking move, Doc!’ Partridge shouted over the barrage. Between them, they manhandled Thomas back behind the wall and dropped him onto the ground. Suddenly, everything fell silent.

  Rowley knelt by Private Thomas and looked at him. Right, he thought. Time to get cracking. At least now the medic knew what he was supposed to be doing as he’d done this before. In a classroom. With a mannequin. A mannequin that no matter how much he fucked up wouldn’t die. He shook Thomas roughly by the shoulders.

  ‘Mate,’ he said, a bit too quietly. ‘Mate, can you hear me?’

  There was no response from Thomas other than a gurgling moan, so Rowley grabbed Thomas's chin with his thumb and forefinger and pulled upwards, tilting Thomas's head back a few degrees. The gurgling stopped, but the moaning didn’t. So far so good, Rowley thought. That’s the airway sorted for the time being. As far as he remembered, breathing was next, so he had a quick squint at Thomas's chest to see if it was moving properly, but the body armour and combat vest the casualty was wearing made it impossible to see anything. He started fumbling with the clips on the front of Thomas's combat vest when he felt Partridge thump down in the dirt next to them.

  ‘Right Doc, what’s the score?’ Partridge barked. ‘Is he dead or what?’

  ‘Give me a fucking chance, Staff,’ Rowley snapped back. ‘For fuck’s sake, just give me a chance.’

  Partridge reached across Rowley’s hands and undid the remaining clips on Thomas's combat vest.

  ‘Alright Doc, calm down. You’re doing okay son. We’ve called it in, so we should get some help soon.’ With the combat vest undone, Rowley was able to push it aside and have a closer look. The body armour was still in the way, so Rowley grabbed the edge of it and pulled the Velcro apart, exposing Thomas's chest. Rowley still couldn’t see a great deal — a blackened hole in the top right side of Thomas's chest and a bit of blood leaking around the edge — but there wasn’t as much blood as he’d expected. Rowley tried to see if Thomas's chest was going up and down like the mannequin in the classroom, but he still couldn’t see what was going on. He looked closely at Thomas's face to check whether his lips looked blue, but it was difficult to tell when he was covered in dust and mud, so he grabbed Thomas's wrist to feel his pulse. The skin was warm, which Rowley thought was a good sign, and when he slipped his fingers to the inside of Thomas's wrist he felt a good pulse, but it wasn’t so fast that it meant he might be bleeding out somewhere else. Rowley realised Partridge wasn’t next to them anymore but was talking with the radio operator, which gave Rowley a chance to take a deep breath and think.

  ‘Airway, ok. Breathing, probably ok. Circulation, ok for the moment,’ Rowley muttered. ‘Fuck, what’s next?’ His training didn’t go much beyond what he’d already done. At least if Thomas had an arm hanging off or was leaking blood all over the sand, he’d have something to do — something to concentrate on. As it was, Rowley couldn’t think of much else given the circumstances, so he grabbed Thomas's hand and squeezed. ‘Hang on mate, you’ll be okay.’

  ‘Right Doc, we good to move?’ Partridge was back. ‘We’ve called it in and there’s a trauma team on the way from Bastion. We just need to get to a decent spot so they can bring in the medics and then we can get him out of here. There’s ground back-up on the way from the Forward Operating Base as well, but they might be a while if they fucking turn up at all.’

  Rowley watched as Partridge shuffled off to give the same message to the other members of the platoon. The medic looked down at the face of his wounded friend, knowing full well that the only reason it was Thomas lying there instead of him was luck.

  2

  Just before the red phone rang in the Trauma Response Team tent at Camp Bastion, Paul Adams was trying to wash hair off his back. He had just had a buzz cut in exchange for four cans of Coke, and the tiny bits of blonde hair stuck to his skin were driving him mad. Adams looked at himself in the mirror, trying to see the hair so he could reach it with the flannel, and failing on both counts. What made it even more difficult was the thin sheen of sweat on his skin that was a constant companion to the oppressive heat in any part of the hospital without air conditioning. Like this part of the TRT tent. Adams was just about to give up with the flannel and accept that he did, in fact, need a shower when the shrill ring from the phone made him jump.

  The phone — which was actually brown but had a sticker on top of the handset with the words ‘Red Phone’ scribbled in marker pen — was linked directly to the Operations Room in the hospital at Camp Bastion, the large, sprawling, and unfinished military camp in the middle of nowhere. It only ever rang when there was a casualty somewhere in Helmand Province. This meant the TRT had to stop whatever they were doing and get themselves down to the flight line where a Chinook helicopter would hopefully be sitting with its rotors turning, waiting to take them somewhere that everyone else was trying to get away from.

  Adams glanced at his watch, knowing that they had a few minutes to get the information, their kit, and the Land Rover on the road. It took at least ten minutes to get the Chinook wound up and running, so although this was an emergency, they didn’t have to start panicking just yet.

  He dropped his flannel into the sink and briskly walked between the dusty camp cots, pausing only to slap his colleague’s foot as he passed the cot where the paramedic was softly snoring. Sergeant Lizzie Jarman woke up with a start and sat up, pulling the iPod earphones out as she scowled at Adams.

  ‘What?’ she grumbled. ‘I was bloody well asleep, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Her hand went to her face and Adams laughed at her irritated expression as she wiped her chin with the back of her hand. Adams remembered the unfortunate picture that had appeared on Facebook of her fast asleep and dribbling saliva down her face. The picture had disappeared within a few days, courtesy of a favour or two being called in from one of her more muscular friends on the base, but she was obviously still wary about waking up in public. ‘What did you wake me up for?’

  ‘Er, phone?’ Adams said, pointing at the red phone that was ringing on the table.

  He thought that it should really have a flashing light on top, or at least be a bit more red, as he picked up the handset. Adams reached for the clipboard next to it, with its attendant biro firmly attached to it with some string and far too much bodge tape and balanced it on his knee. Also on the clipboard were some poorly photocopied copies of the ‘9-Line’, a military standard template for reporting casualties.

  ‘Hello, TRT?’ Adams said, and then listened as the details of their job started to come through. He looked at his watch again before swearing about the fact that the biro was attached to the right-hand side of the clipboard. He kept moving the tape to the middle so that they could all use it — Adams was hopelessly left-handed — but someone kept moving it back to the right-hand side.

  Lizzie joined him, the laces trailing from the desert boots which she’d crammed on her feet. Standing behind him, she raised herself up on tip-toes to look over his shoulder and playfully prodded him in the ribs to try to get him to jump, with no effect. It probably wasn’t the best time to be
playful.

  Adams was on the third line of the 9-Line, which was the first important line as far as they were concerned. The first two lines were the location of the incident and the call sign of the unit requesting assistance — neither of which the TRT cared about. The third line was the number of casualties and how urgent they were, which they cared about a lot.

  He circled the scribbled letters ‘1 x Cat C’ on the form to make sure Lizzie had seen them and carried on filling out the rest of the form, pausing occasionally to repeat back to the Ops Room what he’d heard to make sure that he’d got it down properly. This didn’t stop mistakes from happening, though — they’d been called out the previous week for a Category A patient with abdominal pain which turned out to be constipation from the rations he’d been eating — but it was the best way that they had of getting the information as close to the truth as possible. Adams finished the form and hung up the phone.