Imagine a War...

Imagine a War…

I lay there rolling around in the dirt holding my ankle. The pain spiked paths through my body. Was it broken or just twisted? Would this ruin my war or my entire career? I lay there gritting my teeth as the initial shock began to subside. The droning of aircraft engines ebbed until the only sound was my breathing and the bellowing of parachute silk as the last of the battalion hit the drop zone.
 
  Save for some quicksand at the far end of the DZ the only serious hazard mentioned during the pre-jump briefing was an area of felled trees where two-foot high stumps stood out from the barren earth. With my recent bout of bad luck it wasn't hard to believe I had landed on the one major hazard in a DZ one kilometre wide by three long.
 
  Jumping from 600 feet meant for a very quick descent, and by the time I had kicked out of the twists in my rigging lines, steered away from two entangled paratroopers, and released my equipment container on its length of rope, there was no time left for me to avoid the danger. After carrying out all my mid-air drills I had a second to ready myself for a parachute roll, and bang, I was down.
 
  I unpacked my equipment, slid a magazine into the housing of my weapon and made ready. I was grateful the parachutes were being left where we landed. On exercise it was the norm to carry them to the company rendezvous and drop them off in the pile to be collected by the logistics battalion later. With my foot sending shooting pains up my leg I would not have managed carrying the extra sixty pounds of main and reserve chutes across the DZ. My rucksack already weighed over 100 pounds with all the live ammunition inside.
 
  I traipsed to where Company Sergeant Major Fielding was taking names and directing the men to their platoon positions.
  'You alright, Corporal Atkins?' he asked, pointing at my limp.
  ‘Landed on them damn tree stumps, sir,' I said. I stamped my foot in a machismo display and regretted it instantly.
  'You practising for the freefall display accuracy championship?' His laugh did nothing to ease my pain.
 
  He came across and we both went down on one knee, me with the aide of his shoulder. He pointed across the DZ and said, 'Lieutenant Gray and your platoon are over in that scrub. No heroics, Corporal Atkins; if that foot gets any worse let me know.'
 
  'Yes, sir. I'll try and press on, maybe I can walk it off,' I said, unconvinced, and beneath the brow of his helmet I saw him raise a camouflage darkened eyebrow to show he had even less faith in me doing that.
 
  We were told it would be one hundred and thirty degrees when we parachuted into Kenya's Archer's Post. So intense was the heat that rocks were too hot to touch. The RAF pilots had really thrown their aircraft around during the low-level approach, and in the cramped, stifling, fuel smelling air some of the younger soldiers had been vomiting. We would not see our water re-supply – a camel per platoon carrying two jerry cans – until reaching the mortar line, twenty kilometres from the drop zone.
 
  The distance was so great because the Somalis who had invaded Kenya’s northeastern border were said to have advance forces pushed to within a single kilometre of where we had dropped. It was vague intelligence concerning an improbable coup attempt resulting in the unbelievable decision by Britain to get involved in something that did not concern them. Some of the men couldn’t believe it was happening. They presumed it was a test exercise. But here we were, on the ground with extra magazines filled with live rounds, hand grenades, 66mm anti-tank weapons and two rounds apiece for the mortars.
   
  Lieutenant Gray gave me the task of navigating as A Company would be leading the battalion, and our platoon would be leading the company. Me taking point came as no surprise: there were meant to be pockets of enemy on our advance and Lieutenant Gray hated me.
 
  The advance was gruelling under the Kenyan sun, and with the enemy ahead we had to keep to wearing helmets and not the more comfortable floppy tropical head dress. The want of taking off my boot was torturing me, but if I did I'd never get it back on and my war would be over. I thought the map reading and the thought of enemy soldiers lying up ahead may have taken my mind off it, but I was wrong. The heat was a saving grace for me because it slowed down the battalion's speed to one that I could just maintain. It was a relief when the message came over the radio to slow down my pace rather than speed up. The heat was having a worse toll on some of the newer soldiers than my twisted ankle was on me, and several youngsters were left by the wayside for the medical landrover to pick up later. Many of the young men who had vomited during the low-level approach were struck down with dehydration although my section was still eight strong, and for that I was glad.
 
  We marched all that day and half the night before going to ground at forming up positions. The Officer Commanding the company, Major Davies-Henson, and his Headquarters Company moved through us to meet up with the forward reconnaissance patrols. CSM Fielding paid me some compliments over my route – navigating twenty kilometres over flat savannah is not easy – and enquired after the foot. I told him it had eased up and I was okay to carry on. I lied.
 
  The two mortar rounds we each carried were dropped off in piles as the forming up position was also where the mortar platoon would set up their posts. We were then led off to a holding area where we were told we had at least an hour before the Recce Platoon would come to lead the company to our position in the start line. It was time to re-supply our water bottles from the camel's two jerry cans. It also gave the soldiers a chance to continue the rumours of being on a test exercise because we had met no resistance during our ‘Advance to Contact’. I heard a whispered voice say ten yards passed the start line would be the cardboard targets.
 
  There was no new intelligence concerning the enemy. During the initial orders group the strength of the Somalis was said to be three battalions dug into three separate positions. Tactically you want to have forces three times as large as your objective. Today the numbers were reversed as we were one battalion against three. We had been training in Kenya when the Somalis crossed the border, and I was as surprised as anyone when London agreed to help, and sent us in. The full airborne brigade was being readied in the UK with the first elements having already left RAF Lynham, but the general idea was that one battalion of British Paratroopers could lay down enough firepower to scare the enemy back into Somalia, and by the time the brigade arrived it would be as a blockading force while the Kenyan Army gathered itself. I had every confidence in our abilities, but even so, three to one!
 
  My section was laid out in fire positions at the end of a dry river wadi. Once the water bottles had been filled I went to each pair, whispered to them to take it in turns to wipe down the working parts of their weapons and get some powder in their socks.
 
  The platoon commander was close by, and had heard me do this. When I’d gone back to my bergen rucksack he came across, and said, ‘You too Corporal Atkins.’
 
  I sussed what he was up to straight away. He completely ignored me when I told him of my injury, feigned ignorance when I’d seen him looking at my limp. I explained my dilemma, told him if I took my boot off I'd never get it back on again, but he insisted, made it an order. Five minutes later we were watching my blackened foot swell in his red filtered torchlight. I couldn't even say I told you so because he didn’t give me the chance; he hissed his curses at me for carrying the injury that far and not informing him. My war was over. Thank you very much Sir.
 
  The real killer was when he said, ‘Lance Corporal McGovern, take over.' It was like I’d failed, and for not taking part my peers were sure to secret the white feather of cowardice into my equipment once it was all over. I was devastated.
 
  Lieutenant Gray called the medic who appeared instantly. It made it glaringly obvious he had no intention of letting me continue. He was having his fun after letting me suffer twenty kilometres of torture. He'd never liked me because my experience was a threat to his leadership. I hadn’t been nicknamed Corporal Nasty for nothing, and I'd faced off with him more than once over his poor decision-making. I should never have taken the boot off, should have disobeyed him, gone to the platoon sergeant, and pleaded my case. Having said that Sergeant Cooper was a compassionate man, not as suspicious of injuries as some other NCOs, and would have sided with the boss having seen the way I was limping on the drop zone.
 
  So Lieutenant Gray finally got rid of me. He’d been trying since joining the platoon last summer. He could not handle the feeling of inferiority towards my twelve years of experience. My missing this battle would give him a lift up. It would give him something over me.
  'Lucky you,' the medic said, helping me to the landrover that was also surprisingly close at hand, 'you're off to the Anthills. The locals are cooking up a traditional breakfast for all the wounded.'
 
  The road to the med station was a dirt track and every rut he bounced over sent stinging pains right up to my groin. I had to sit in the passenger seat as a second medic and two heat victims took up the back. We had not travelled far when in our headlamps we saw a cheetah sitting majestically in the centre of the track. We slowed and stopped just ten yards away. The cat sat there squinting. His chin was up, and he looked around seemingly oblivious to the vehicle’s presence. It was one of those moments, my foot was forgotten. The driver dipped his lights, and as if seeing us for the first time the cat darted into the bush. Seconds later I was again wincing with every rut in the road.
 
  The med station they'd called the Anthills looked just like that in the darkness of the Kenyan night. A half moon provided little light in the shallow dry river valley, but I could easily make out the ends of the low two man tents looking like scattered termite mounds. The top of the main tent, acting as office and operating theatre, was just visible in the next wadi along. I heard the bleat of a goat from somewhere in the same wadi.
 
  I'd heard during the advance about the parachute injuries, and enquired after friends who’d been hurt. 'Vodka Mission' Tomlinson had landed with his container still attached to his legs, too busy to release it with trying to untangle himself from Joe 'Three Names', and had landed so badly the medic had said his legs looked as if they were tied in a knot. As I listened to the doctors and medics a lump came to my throat. They thought the injuries so great that ‘Vodka Mission’ might loose both legs, would certainly never walk unaided again. He had landed entangled in the parachute of Private Joe MacEnerny who had dislocated both his elbow and shoulder of his right arm, ‘Three Names’ was the lucky one. Both men had been choppered straight from the DZ to a Nairobi hospital.
 
  After getting my foot strapped I was led to my open camp bed, all the tents were taken, and full of snoring heat victims from the days march. In amongst the night smells I was overpowered by the stench of burnt vegetation. Behind the tents along the wadi were dark circles of earth, and in the moonlight I could see they had once been fires. I didn't think to question what had been burnt there and eased myself down after brushing an inch long brown scorpion from under the stale smelling pillow.
 
  I was woken an hour or so later by the crumpf of mortar rounds landing on the battalion's objectives. The mortars were due to start pounding the enemy positions at H-minus five. The Eastern sky was a melange of pale blues and yellows as dawn crept towards us. I lay there listening, thinking about being crouched at the start line with my fire team one side of me and Lance Corporal McGovern's the other. The explosions of the mortars landing were a sound like no other, both sharp crack and deep resonant boom as each bomb's impact lifted sand and rock. After two minutes the deep bass of the mortars were joined by the sharp crackle of machine gun fire. It was H-minus three minutes. The repetitive bursts were of several heavy machine gun posts. Belts upon belts of ammunition would be fired towards the enemy positions to create a killing zone. I carefully swung my legs off the camp bed, and it was a real struggle to get up as the bed was only inches off the dirt. To the North I could see flashes of light on the undersides of clouds before the booms of explosives reached me moments later. The orange streak of an occasional tracer round flashed towards the last dying stars as they ricochet off the rocky land. The crumpf of the mortars began to diminish and were replaced by sporadic gunfire that came in both bursts and aimed shots. H hour, I'd have been leading my men forward until we came across the first of the enemy positions. Shouting at McGovern to get his team to give fire support, and that I was going left or right flanking. I could pick out these individual sounds amongst the continual cacophony of battle noise. The automatic bursts of fire support, the aimed shots as section commander and grenadier crept towards the bunker, a short pause then the boom of a grenade, and the automatic bursts as they both went in to neutralize anyone surviving the grenade. I stood there listening, knowing it was going to go on for the rest of the day. Once the A Company vanguard had cleared the first positions B and C Companies would sweep forward to clear either flank. Three platoons to a company, each with three sections vying to be the ones to get stuck in and show their skills. A brighter flash lit the far off sky, and moments later a different explosion echoed passed me. I guessed the anti-tank platoon had let rip against a tank hull. The enemy had personnel carries, and I wondered if any soldiers had taken shelter in them once our attack had gone in. If the wind was blowing in the right direction I might even get to smell the cordite. I could already feel the aggression, sense the blood, snot and vomit of what was going on one kilometre to the north, and here I was, a sicky.
 
  It wasn't the nasal busting smell of cordite that eventually teased my senses, but the smell of cooking, and instantly my stomach felt empty. I turned my back to the distant battle noise and the place I longed to be.
 
  I hopped to the main tent where something of a meal was being prepared by two Kenyan Army medical aides between the side of the tent and the mound that formed the wadi. Dawn's light was approaching fast, but I still needed to move closer to see what was being cooked. One of the Kenyans was squatting close to the ground pulling things on sticks from an oven that had been created using several flat rocks as walls and, what looked to me like, an upturned dustbin lid as its roof. He passed the skewers up to the other guy who ripped them apart and threw the chunks onto the steel lid that instantly started to sizzle. The two Kenyans turned and smiled huge white teeth at me. On closer inspection the kebabs turned out to be small birds that had been roasted in the makeshift oven and were then broken up and placed into the metal dish that was both a roof to the oven and frying pan. Some vegetables of a kind had already been pealed and were in the pan. Once the meat had been stripped and placed in the sizzling stir-fry the remaining carcass was dropped onto a wooden board. I watched as seven of these small cooked birds were removed from the oast and deboned. The squatting guy turned, picked up two machetes that had been laid in the dirt beside his boots, wiped them across his camouflaged trousers, and proceeded to hack the bones into tiny pieces like a manic drummer. I watched as pieces of bone flew from the board. Just as I was beginning to think the chopping of the bones into dust was more ritual than culinary he stopped and scraped the remnants into the pan with the meat and vegetables. I'd seen enough and hopped back to my camp bed as the first phase of the attack was dying out.
 
  I lay there, hands behind my head, watching the last stars disappear as daylight overcame night. A Company's battle was over for the time being as the action to the North had been reduced to short controlled bursts of automatic fire from the machine gun platoon. A Coy would be in the reorganisation phase, counting casualties, resupplying ammunition and radioing situation reports. I’m not a religious man, but said a prayer for my fellow soldiers nonetheless.
  'Scoff's up,' one of the battalion medics shouted walking between the low tents. 'Rise and shine you sickies, we've got a Kenyan Army breakfast waitin' for yer.'
 
  I pulled a mess tin from my webbing along with my black plastic mug. My wooden 'racing' spoon I keep in a zip-lock bag in my shirt pocket, a personal quirk.
 
  At the main tent there were the traditional Norwegian containers of porridge alongside those brimming with sweet tea made with condensed milk that strip the enamel off your teeth. These containers stood in a row to the side of the tent, a ladle across the lid of each.
  'Corporal Atkins, we finally get the pleasure of your dry wit and charming personality,' the Medical Sergeant mocked, referring to the fact I had never been sick. 'What'll it be Andy? There's the slop's porridge, or traditional Kenyan Chicken something.'
  'Smallest chickens I ever saw,’ I said, ‘but I think I'll give it a go.'
  'Brave man.'
 
  One of the two Kenyans was lifting the steaming metal dish from the top of the stone oven with two sticks at either side. He placed the bowl onto the sand, then waved for me not to eat the porridge, but to try their fare. I filled my mug with tea from the row of plastic containers before hobbling over to join them. Alongside the wide metal tray full of chicken stew they’d placed a pile of unleavened bread, and were using that to scoop up the stew, much like I'd seen Indians eat curry. There was no way I was going to balance on my haunches like them, and so plonked myself down heavily to the open side of the pan, my legs out in front of me. Immediately bread was put into my hands, and both men demonstrated how to eat their food with the smallest effort.
 
  I was hungry, and considered the food as fuel, not for pleasure. It didn't taste at all bad, like chicken heavily flavoured with paprika. I finished my share, refused seconds, but refilled my mug with tea and hopped back to my camp bed. The battle sounds had now been reduced to the odd mortar landing. I lifted the pillow to check for scorpions, tidied my equipment then lay down thinking of cod and chips, shepherd’s pie and Yorkshire pudding.


I awoke with a start, covered in sweat and with fire in my throat and stomach. I rolled off my camp bed, just as my guts rolled within me. I didn’t know where the designated ablutions were. I looked down towards the end of the wadi, and thought that would make a good toilet. My bowels, however, were playing a different game, and exploded from me before I got to my feet. I was drenched in sweat, and my face felt too hot to touch. I'd forgotten about my sprained ankle, my legs collapsed under me as I tried to stand. I was falling forwards. Time had stopped. The mustard dark earth was rushing to meet my face but I couldn't raise my hands to break the fall. Why? Why didn't my arms work? Why was I so hot? Why were the rocks so big? Someone shouted, 'MEDIC!' My head hit the ground on the second syllable.
 
  I don't remember from my own first aid courses where you get to punch someone in the stomach to clear an airway, but that’s what it felt like, and it worked. I came too with someone’s fingers in my mouth clearing the last of the vomit that was making me choke. Or was it the foul tasting fingers that made me retch again and again and again. Whatever body part that medic had been scratching certainly wasn't one that saw much light of day. I retched until there was nothing else to bring up, my mouth open in a frozen scream, eyes watering, and veins in my neck near to popping. If the heat wasn't bad enough, and the foot throbbing like a drumbeat, the vomiting really sapped what little strength I had left. My head was on a spring, and started to loll from side to side. Three medics held me upright while the doctor poured a little water over my head, and then held it still to allow me to drink. I must have passed out again because the water flying from my mouth woke me up, and I was on all fours. Everything was blurred and nothing seemed real. I'd wake up in a minute to someone shouting, 'Rise and shine you sickies, we've got a Kenyan Army breakfast waitin' for yer.' But the dream didn't end, and the twisting of my innards caused my hands to shake. I curled up into a ball listening to the medics. 'Dehydration' 'heat stroke' 'food poisoning' all passed their lips. One of the Kenyans was stood there pointing towards the dark rings of burnt earth. His one word knotted my stomach even tighter, 'anthrax.'
 
  I awoke in delirium inside the main medic’s tent, lying on the operating table with a plastic sheet beneath me. I felt fuzzy, light headed and utterly helpless. The radio was playing the Queen song Don’t Stop Me Now, the words mocking me: I’m floating around in ecstasy, so don’t stop me now. I was shivering uncontrollably, but at the same time felt as if I was still under the African sun. I’m burning through the sky, yeah. My face was burning up, the skin pulled taught across my cheeks and brow. I'd stopped sweating, a bad sign, I was aware of that much. My lips and throat were dry. Salt crystals caked my eyelids and ears. I was dizzy. Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mr Fahrenheit. I didn't feel a thing when they inserted the catheter, couldn't raise my head to watch the assembly of the giving set, and didn't have the strength to ask what fluids were being pumped into me. Things were moving along at least. Travelling at the speed of light. A medic wiped the dried salt from my face with a wet cloth. That felt good, do it again do it again. I couldn't talk, couldn't lift a finger. There was nothing inside. I was an empty shell, their plaything. Gonna make a supersonic man out of you. It was strange, but I felt no panic at all, rather euphoric because I was not in control, and could not be blamed. If I died it was the medics’ fault, not mine. I started to slip, eyes heavy. Don't stop me, don't stop me yeah yeah yeah. What had they given me, anything? Was I dying? If I was I can tell you it felt damn good. Ooh ooh ooh I like it. Have a good time good time. Was that Queen playing? I hate Queen.


When I came too again, when clarity had returned to my vision and mind, I was in a hospital with an ugly nurse with huge breasts straightening my bedclothes. I was wearing granddad style pyjamas, and still had a bag of fluid plugged into a vein in my arm. She smiled revealing three gold teeth, and said something that at first I thought was Swahili, but could have been very poor English. I was in a ward, my corner had been shielded from the rest. It was peaceful save for the odd cough and occasional murmur somewhere. There was a picture of the Kenyan President on the wall.
 
  I was in tatters. Head to foot either ached or burned. I dare not move through fear of setting something off inside me, but the perverted, inquisitive part of my throbbing head told me to do just that. I needed a systems check, needed to know what was working and what was not. This was going to be bad, I thought. My twisted ankle pulsed within the restrictive bandages, and seared white-hot as I tried to lift it off the mattress. The white sheet weighed ten tons and my leg felt glued to the mattress. Did my toes have any skin left on them? Moving was bad, moving caused pain. In contrast to the tightness of my foot my knees were like jelly, weak and with no ability to support me. Well that’s how it felt laying there not wanting to move. My back and behind felt sticky, from sweat I hoped, and again I dare not move a hand to tell. My torso was the worst. My innards ached and baked and churned and burned, and if a doctor came in to tell me they had replaced my stomach with a bag of irate porcupines, inserted through my anus, I would have believed him. I felt empty, but at the same time something large was moving around in there, a bubbling lava pit stretched to the point of eruption. All these aches, all the parts of me that were from another world were being controlled from my chest. It felt full, burning with napalm, and breathing came in tiny baby like gasps, scratching their way into my life support system. I closed my eyes. Even that hurt.
 
  So this was it, this was how it was going to end. I was to be left for dead on the shores of some stinking country, with no more than a, ‘sorry Mrs Atkins, your Son was lost to anthrax, died in a puddle of his own warm shit.’ I was getting drowsy, relaxed, sleep would be good, sleep would deny my pain its taunting control of my body. I needed sleep, needed to calm my nerves for whatever awaited me. I needed to rest and rebuild my strength.
 
  I tried to take a slow deep breath. The scratching caught in my throat that caused a stifled ‘ahem’ that caused a tearing cough that caused the God of Merciless Pain to pull me through from arse to elbow with a wad of sandpaper the size of an artillery shell. I turned to the wrong side pulling the stand over that held my bag of fluid, wracking out a cough that made me vomit blood. There it was all frothy pink on the white pillow. There were some shouts from across the ward as I coughed harder. The nurse came in a rush, skidding on the vomit like an elephant on ice, and crashed into the bedside cabinet. Her breasts bounced into my head and face, but I didn’t find it funny at all.
 
  It was later that same day, at least I think it was, when the nurse brought the doctor to see me. He stood there, at the end of my bed reading the chart, the blackest man I have ever seen. He didn’t smile, didn’t console or mess with words, simply read the chart then peered at me over the top of flimsy spectacles that rested half way down his broad, pockmarked nose.
  ‘Gastrointestinal anthrax you have,’ he said without emotion, ‘to be sure we have to carry out a full blood culture. I am certain this is what you have. I don’t need science to recognise the symptoms. This disease has plagued our lands for thousands of years.’
 
  He spoke his English with proud confidence. Walking around the bed he grabbed my wrist to take a pulse. I opened my mouth to speak, but was cut short.
  ‘Please do not try to speak, you will only restart the coughing again,’ he said looking from his wristwatch to me. ‘You are in safe hands now.’ His words brought back the image of the lumbering top heavy nurse skidding towards me on a collision course. ‘We have been able to treat you immediately, penicillin, and there is a very good chance of a recovery, but you must rest.’
 
  He moved around the foot of my bed then lifted the corner of the sheet to reveal my foot in a Plaster of Paris cast. He ran a wooden stick up my big toe that caused me to tense and suck in air through gritted teeth.
  ‘You have three broken metatarsals as well as a bruised heel and sprained ankle. If you survive the anthrax your foot should be very okay.’
He spoke to the nurse in Swahili, but still felt it prudent to move her away from the bed and keep his voice down. Anthrax. So this was anthrax.


It took a full week, but I eventually regained the strength to sit up in bed, albeit with the help of the nurse. I had stopped coughing up blood, and the headaches had gone. I was also off the drip and eating semi solids, fed to me by the nurse. The day before had been the first full day she hadn’t had to change soiled sheets and give me the rub down. She smiled a lot, but with it cleaned me with a brutish urgency, as if my white skin needed to come off. What, did my excrement smell any different to the rest of the men who were regularly messing themselves in hospital beds? She smiled a lot, but secretly hated the sight of me. I’m sure the gruel she brought me to eat three times a day was the cover of a hardback book chewed to a pulp by her own gleaming gold teeth. I was down, could find no right in the world, and wanted someone to blame for my illness. I knew she didn’t hate me by the way she kept me so clean.
 
  I could not remember the date of the battle, and had to ask how long I’d been in the hospital, what day it was. I had been in Nairobi for two and a half weeks and had arrived in a coma. I got the drift that I’d been so bad on arrival I hadn’t just been close to death once or twice, but could have died at anytime had constant care not been given over the first week.
 
  Sergeant Cooper and Lance Corporal McGovern came to see me. It was a nice thought by them to bring me chocolate, even though it was from a ration pack. They said the battalion had left for home, and the final exercise had gone well. When I said I thought it was a real war they didn’t get my meaning, said the anthrax had certainly put me through one. In my confusion I didn’t press the point, and found it strange they said so little about the attack. They did tell me a story about a B Company lad who had gone missing after the jump. We had been ten kilometres into our advance when he was found by the logistics battalion up to his chest in quicksand. His equipment container had landed on solid ground and his parachute in a tree, the lines leading to his harness the only things stopping him from sinking further. The story made me laugh that made me choke that brought the nurse who told my two friends it was time for them to leave.


It was after another week when the Doctor came to do his thing with the chart and my wrist, the nurse standing attentively behind him.
  ‘Amazing recovery Mr Annakin…’
  ‘It’s Atkins,’ I croaked from my still swollen neck.
 
  Both doctor and nurse looked at me as if he had been right and I was wrong and shouldn’t have interrupted.
  ‘They must feed you something different in your Army, very strong,’ he said, squeezing my bicep. ‘Your strength and the antibiotics have saved the day, how are you feeling?’
  ‘Better,’ I said, and rubbed my stomach. ‘Not grumbling as much today.’
  ‘That is your intestinal legion in regression. You had the type of Anthrax that attacks the lower gastrointestinal tract. Two more weeks and you will be ready to fly to your home.’
  ‘How did I get it?’ I said.
  ‘Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by spore-forming bacterium, usually transmitted by…’ I half listened, feeling my stomach fizz and expand, his words passing over me like wind through trees. Bacillus anthracis, attacks the lymph nodes, produces toxins, destruction of the structures in the middle chest, local lymphadenopathy, oedema, oesophageal ulcer: medical mumbo jumbo that all sounded fatal, and he was telling me it could have been worse. ‘You possibly contacted it by eating undercooked food, usually cattle or goats. But these types of spores can exist in the soil for decades. Actually I have already spoken to Sergeant Mtata who came with you in the ambulance. He told me he had argued with your commander not to put their tents on that site, but your Army insisted.’ He said this while screwing up his face, showing his frustration at the ineptitude. ‘You were sleeping on the site of a village that had been burnt to the ground because of Anthrax. Half the villagers died, and all of its livestock. You being there was an accident waiting to happen, as you English say. But you could have contracted it anywhere.’
 
  I pictured the scene: snobbish officers ignoring the local advice, adamant they would have their Medical Station set up exactly where they wanted it, confusing the warning of Anthrax with Anthills. I should have asked more questions about these burnt out sites, this hadn't been the first. As the doctor spoke, his words drifting over me, I could count three locations where we had trained, and there were the burnt circles in the earth.
  ‘Sergeant Mtata thought you had Anthrax immediately, but actually the symptoms do not start to show for two or three days. You were unconscious with extreme food poisoning before we started to see the development of Anthrax. Your body rejected the food he had cooked for you. We still have many tests to carry out to be sure we have diagnosed you correctly. Do not look so sad, you are on your way to a full recovery.’
 
  I was looking so sad because it had been my platoon commander, Lieutenant Gray, who had been sent with the advance party to choose the location of the Med Station, as he had chosen all of our training areas. Of course it was an exercise. Of course it wasn’t a real invasion because the boss had come to Kenya a fortnight early to find the drop zone, map out the advance and plan the attack for the final exercise. He had chosen the spot where I’d contracted my sickness. A fog cleared and I realised the war had been my imagination. The Somali invasion was the fictitious picture given by the Commanding Officer during the orders group. After my injury the scenario became a reality used as the driving force to get me over twenty kilometres with a broken foot. I had told myself the threat was real to drive myself through the injury. In war we push on regardless, but there had been no war.
   
  The Doctor departed leaving the nurse holding yet another bowl of her chewed up cardboard. I had no appetite, and feared it might never return.