Dog Soldiers: Love, loyalty and sacrifice on the front line. Isabel George

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СКАЧАТЬ sure I listened to all the man had to say (though, for the life of me, I can’t remember much at all). I’m sure I probably thanked him for coming and for his patience and for his offer of help and his advice. In the silent moments after Ken showed the man out I no doubt thought what a horrid job that must be to have to visit parents in the dead of night and give them the worst news they could ever imagine. I wondered how he must feel now, driving back to wherever. I’m sure he breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he sat back in the car and told himself that he never wanted to do that again – knowing that he would have to, sooner or later.

      I didn’t blame him – it wasn’t his fault – but he had opened a portal direct to hell, and for me there was no way out.

      I cried, of course I cried, but I didn’t fall apart – not then.

      The funny thing was, I had felt odd all that previous day.

      I had been on day three of the four-day audit and I was driving back from the Carlisle office when I heard a loud ‘boom’. I was on the A69 at about 5.30pm so I wondered if I had kicked something up off the road that had hit the car, or perhaps that someone behind me had experienced a tyre blow-out or a mechanical problem. I couldn’t see anything and my car was still driving OK, so I carried on. I just wanted to get home.

      It had been a long day and I blamed that for the ‘low’ feeling and whatever it was that was making me feel ‘not right’. The journey had not been too painful but I was glad to swing the car onto the drive and turn off the ignition. Home.

      Ken was already there, which meant the evening meal would be on the go and a pot of tea at the ready. That realisation would usually be enough to ease my stress level and calm me down but that odd feeling was still in the pit of my stomach and I didn’t like it at all.

      As I kicked off my shoes in the hall I noticed something that made me feel worse: the white orchid that Kenneth had given me for Mother’s Day had dropped a bloom. Not only that but the leaves were turning brown and some had already fallen. I accept that house plants die and orchids are particularly fragile – I should know as I love them and had kept them for years – but the thing about this particular orchid was that it had flowered so well and for so long. Kenneth had had to give it to me well in advance of Mother’s Day as he knew he would be in Afghanistan in March. Everyone who’d seen it had remarked on its beauty and staying power.

      I stood looking at it for a few minutes and felt quite sick. I took it as a sign of change and from that moment I felt restless.

      I was tired that night but I couldn’t sleep. I should have been ready for bed and some good refreshing sleep but all I could manage was lots of tossing and turning. Even when I dozed off I was awake in minutes, with my head spinning.

      It was then that I saw the headlights at the bedroom window.

       ‘This is the lunchtime news from the BBC:

      ‘The Army dog handler killed in Afghanistan on Thursday has been named by the Ministry of Defence. Lance Corporal Kenneth Michael Rowe, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, who was 24, and from Newcastle, had been due to leave the front line the day before he died. He and his explosives search dog, Sasha, died after coming under Taliban fire during a routine patrol in Helmand. Lance Corporal Rowe had asked not to leave on Wednesday as he worried about his base not having enough search cover. The death brings the total number of British service personnel who have died in Afghanistan to 112.

      ‘Lance Corporal Rowe’s commanding officer, Major Stuart McDonald, said, “This unselfish action epitomises his professionalism and dedication to his job. I feel lucky to have known him and gutted to have to say goodbye.”

      ‘Kenneth Rowe and his dog Sasha were the first Royal Army Veterinary Corps dog and handler to be killed in action since The Troubles in Northern Ireland.’

      So it was real.

      I remember, we were standing in the kitchen with my brother, Gary, when I heard Kenneth’s name on the television. There on the screen was the photograph of my son in his dress uniform. The photograph that, until a few hours before, had been hanging, in its frame, on the stairs. My handsome son. My beautiful boy.

      That was the moment when I let go.

      If someone asked me to tell them exactly what happened next I would have only one answer – I’ve no idea.

      I had motored through the previous ten hours on auto-pilot, with a huge heap of denial thrown in, but when reality was eventually allowed in it took over. My sister Lesley came over and decided I needed tranquillisers to calm me down, but I didn’t want to leave the house and the medication couldn’t be prescribed over the telephone so, bizarrely, I found myself sitting in the doctor’s waiting room in floods of tears. There I was, patiently waiting for my appointment and wondering what on earth I was doing there!

      I’m sure the pills worked, taking the edge off whatever I was feeling, but I don’t think anything could have taken away the anger that rose inside me when the press started knocking on the door. Waves of well-meaning neighbours at the door was one thing, but having the media parked outside on the lawn was something else. We are very close and keep everything within our family unit – we solve our own problems together – but suddenly the BBC News had exposed our loss, our soft underbelly, and we felt vulnerable. Ken and my brothers dealt with the press on the doorstep. A simple ‘leave us alone’ seemed to work effectively, at least on the decent ones.

      Me? I just wanted it all to go away.

      The awful thing is, just hours before our nightmare began, Kenneth was supposed to be on his way home to us.

      The day I drove to Carlisle for the audit Kenneth emailed me at 6am: ‘Hi, Mam. Who will be picking me up and what time?’ I remember saying: ‘Don’t worry about that, son, you just get yourself home. It’ll be me or your dad. I’m off to work now so I’ll ask your dad to call you back later to let you know who will be there for you.’

      That was it. I had visions of Kenneth finishing his duties at Bastion then packing and getting ready to catch the next Helmand Taxi (as they called the Chinook) out to start his journey to RAF Brize Norton where the military aircraft landed and … home. Friday was to be the last day of my audit, which was great because, once I had thought about the timings, I knew that I would be able to be with Ken when he drove down to Brize to pick up Kenneth. I wanted to see our son so much.

      This was July and I hadn’t seen him since the Deployment Party in February. Kenneth had enjoyed being with his mates and his family and it was great to meet the people he would be spending the next few months with in Afghanistan. They would be his ‘family’ until he came home again and they had seemed a great bunch of lads.

      I will never forget what Kenneth was wearing that night – a salmon-pink T-shirt. It wasn’t my cup of tea and he probably knew that. It was funny to me because Kenneth was always so smart; he thought about everything he wore and his thick dark brown hair was always gelled into place. He had told me that a lot of his Army friends had thought he had Mediterranean blood but he always said he was proud to tell them that his dark hair and olive complexion were thanks to his half-Hong Kong Chinese mother. I liked that.

      The morning after the party there he was at breakfast – in the same T-shirt. I had to ask him if he had anything else to wear, which he knew I would at some point. But of course he was travelling light and was meeting friends later so I understood when he said, ‘Sorry, Mam, this is all I’ve got, but you won’t forget it, will you?’ It’s true, that shirt made a lasting impression on me. I sometimes forgot СКАЧАТЬ