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

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СКАЧАТЬ … My new address means you won’t have to send stuff through Bastion anymore so you can get things to me a lot easier.

       ‘I have a list of things needed or liked. Not necessarily to be sent all at once … and I’ve asked Jeni to send some stuff so if you can tie in with her plz … at least I will have them for when I get back from the job I’m going on. So, watch, trainer socks, baby wipes, photos of the family, Bonjela, something to cut my nails with other than my bayonet, under crackers (pants) and dog treats and toys for Diesel – oh, and a digital camera (there was one in Argos quite cheap). There are cameras out here but they are six megapixel shite … and the phone I sent back to you is bloody five million pixels. I wanted a better one to keep pictures of my experiences here. I should have thought about it long before this, like.’

      While his dad got questions about the car and if it had been fixed yet, and the state of Newcastle United, Kenneth made sure his girls did his shopping! He knew we would run around and made sure there was always one parcel on its way and another being made up. We soon got used to the delay in his requests coming in, the parcel leaving home and arriving with him. Numbering the parcels helped, too, so he knew what to expect in each and which email or letter it corresponded with. It was a bit of a science, really, and certainly there was nothing random about it.

      Of course, there was the odd challenge, like the time he asked for Drumstick lollies in a bluey on 10 April:

       ‘Thanks again for the watch and the socks. Guys are already sick of the T-shirt and me getting news of Newcastle victories. It’s great! Oh, Mam, can you find me some Drumstick lollies? I had a craving for them along with some malted milk biscuits. Ahhh, I know it’s hard maybe to do but a “brew” kit – some real teabags. Sugar I’ll be able to steal and we’ve got dried milk but a packet of real teabags plz. I miss a good brew. Oh well, speak again soon. All my love as always, Ken xxx and Diesel xxx’

      Sometimes, in those early days of Kenneth being in Afghanistan I forgot that I was sending this stuff into temperatures of 30 to 40 degrees plus. I was over the moon to find Drumstick lollies aplenty in our local shop. As I grabbed a handful out of the box on the counter I imagined the broad grin that would appear on my son’s face when he opened the envelope and there they would be, along with his requested biscuits, sports mags and back copies of the Newcastle Chronicle, plus the little surprises that Jeni and Steph had prepped for him. Envelope sealed and addressed to Lance Corporal Kenneth Rowe, Dog Handler, Op Herrick 8, I felt pure joy as the woman at the post office took it from me. To me, it was already on its way.

      Then came the ‘thank you’ bluey:

      ‘Hi Mam, Received your parcel today which was a nice touch – everything was crushed and melted, like. The Drumstick lollies were open and had leaked onto the newspapers with the melted chocolate off the biscuits! … Never mind … I’ve been putting some weight back on but just on my stomach … not good … I will have to go running when I get home. You get any passes for the gym?’

      I tried a second time with the lollies and all landed successfully – wrapped and intact. Kenneth must have decided to share them out or the opening of his parcel had attracted a crowd because he wrote to say: ‘… can’t believe how much a small thing like a Drumstick lolly can put such big smiles on the faces of four grown men!’ I like to think of him sitting eating the lollies – bought in a little shop in Newcastle – with his mates in the dust of Afghanistan.

      He always said the parcels were a massive boost to morale and there was always huge excitement when the post arrived – it didn’t matter whose post. The contents of letters and parcels were always likely to be a source of comfort, amusement, relief, joy and sometimes ridicule from their mates. Kenneth’s parcels always had to have that extra something – for the dog. Non-melting, of course.

      After that I was much more careful about wrapping each item before adding them to his parcels. Sending things when he was based in Northern Ireland had been much easier – searing heat was never likely to be a problem there, although drowning would have been no surprise as every letter and phone call featured a rain report. From March to April 2008, almost every letter from Kenneth featured the weather, but it was all about heat and dust, rain and sand.

      At first the sunshine was a novelty and there were plenty of ‘no time to sunbathe’ jokes and tales of sunscreen shortages. Kenneth liked the sun and he had inherited my olive skin but the Afghan heat was too intense even for him. Soon it began to affect everything from his sleep to his general morale. By the end of April he was wishing for snow and when the rain came he wanted it to go away. Kenneth was never shy of a good moan, and I’m sure his Army mates were used to it, too, but once he had said his piece he admitted he felt better: ‘rant over’.

      Kenneth worried about Diesel, too. He always told us how well his dog was working, but shelter and rest were important and Kenneth’s Bergen was always packed with food, treats and a blanket for Diesel. Whatever the weather had to offer, Diesel would be OK. If Kenneth had to dig in for shelter he dug a man-and-Labrador-sized hole. If there were sandbags to protect the hole from the rain Kenneth explained how he had extended the sandbag wall to protect his dog, too. That dog was his mate as much as any other soldier there.

      Plans for his deployment out of Kandahar Airfield (KAF) in mid-April had been held back so the days waiting meant more time to write letters home. I loved getting the extra letters but I didn’t like hearing Kenneth’s frustration. ‘That work I mentioned has been postponed for now so I’m still in KAF living the dream! … How’s life back in Newcastle?’ If the letters weren’t very short, they were very long and full of detailed questions about his dog at home, ‘K’, and the welfare of Trevor his tortoise and how his dad was getting on with setting up the vivarium. I couldn’t help smiling as I read his ramblings. Maybe there was a little bit of guilt in there for leaving us with his pets to care for (but we had always done that) or it was all about stringing out that connection – for as long as he could stay awake to write it all down. It was funny and lovely and I just wanted to reach out and give him a massive hug.

      Getting a letter like that said one thing to me: he needed cheering up. He was going to miss his sister Stephanie’s 21st birthday meal so I decided we would take a bluey and a pen with us and pass it around the table so every member of the family could add a message to Kenneth – as if he had been there with us. He loved it! In the best way we could we managed to get Kenneth at that table, and just imagining the food was enough for him. It was as if living on ration packs had caused him to hallucinate about his grandma’s Chinese chicken curry, mince and dumplings and his favourite roast dinners. If I could have sent him a doggy bag I would have done it that night. Instead I wrote: ‘We missed you, son,’ knowing that he was missing us too.

      Kenneth had just become a father too, to baby Hannah. He was so happy about the baby and desperate to see the little one, who was born just after he went on tour. It wasn’t an easy situation with Kenneth so far away and I know Hannah was on his mind all the time. From the moment she was born she was in his letters. He was a father and he wanted to get home to see her, but he was also a dedicated dog soldier with a job to do.

      For him, that April seemed to involve a lot of waiting and then waiting some more – for the ‘push’, as he described it. He told us the little he could about the scheduled briefings and particularly the training sessions which he loved and kept the dogs at the top of their game. Kenneth was pleased with Diesel and could see his potential, which was why he was eager to get the dog out on the ground. He was desperate to get the camera so he could send us photos of Diesel, his mate, going through his paces. I could sense his restlessness and the boredom in waiting for something to happen, but for us at home there was a greater distraction – the fear that something could happen to him.

      From the time the conflict began in 2001 there was always enough on the TV to enable families СКАЧАТЬ