“Don’t you just love Sundays?” Jane said, looking at Dave. “Making out in the morning," she said with a wink, "and then staying in bed till lunchtime. Great idea coming down to the lake, though.” When she said this, she looked at Dave with one of her, I feel dirty smiles, and said, “Out here in this little boat...all alone!” She glanced around, looking to see if anybody was nearby, then, tilting her head slightly forward and looking straight into his eyes, she stuck the tip of her tongue out and rolled it across her top lip. Dave shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, wondering what she had in mind. Noticing the look of panic creep across his face, she let out a little laugh, then leaning forward, she kissed him, rolled over and lay down. Dave joined her and they both started giggling like a couple of teenagers, as they soaked up the sun.
The day felt perfect.
At the time, Dave thought being in the boat with Jane, was real. Little did he know, it was just his mind taking him away from the pain his body experienced and was still enduring from the accident.
When he woke up, lying in the hospital bed, it took him a few minutes to actually work out where he was. He fought to ignore the noises in his head–the screams of the children, the cries of the mothers, and the explosions.
When the Doctors explained what had happened, Dave cried. They said the team he was on had been caught in a bombing raid and he’d been buried under tonnes of rubble.
Paul and Jim had been killed, and Pierre had lost both of his legs from the knees down. Dave's injuries stretched to burns down his neck, back and legs, and broken bones, so he was the lucky one!
His physical injuries, the doctors told him, should slowly improve, but it would take years, if ever, for the mental ones to go.
When they explained what he'd been through just to get to this point, he was stunned. Firstly, he'd been treated on the ground by the combat medics, then medivacked to Shaibah Log Base and assessed. Later, he’d been transported back to the U.K. where he was taken by ambulance to the Ministry of Defence Hospital Units in Birmingham, the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine. He then went straight into the theatre for the first of many operations.
Dave just said he didn’t remember a thing!
2
Dave couldn’t wait to get back to his unit and his mates. Boredom was his biggest problem, it gave him time to think… and remember. Also, as he kept telling the doctors, there’s only so many times you can count the shapes on the floor.
“Still,” he thought, “I should be glad I’m still alive, so they keep reminding me, for God’s sake!
The doctors told him, “You should expect to get angry and depressed, especially after what you’ve just been through!”
He lay there, nodding, wishing they would just leave him alone.
He couldn’t remember much. It was all just a blur. He went out with his unit and woke up in the hospital.
They did say his memory might come back to him though, so they set him up with some counselling to help with the flashbacks he’d experience.
Four months later, twice as long as they expected, as there was a problem with the skin grafts, the doctor was finally pleased with the progress he was now making.
The guys from his unit visited regularly, but that dwindled down to just Nat.
“I can’t blame the others really,” Dave said. “It’s not as if I’ve got much to tell them.”
“Cheer up, mate. You’ll be out soon!” Nat said, trying to get Dave to smile.
Nat tried smuggling in a few beers but was stopped by a sharp-eyed nurse. She confiscated the stash. She didn’t say too much about it, but she’s started giving Dave a cheeky smile every time she passed by his bed.
They transferred him to the Peterborough City Hospital, so his family would find it easier to visit. Finding him a bed in the military unit there. The best thing was, they let him lay on his back and sit up. Until then, he’d been on his front because of the burns.
“It’s the little things in life that help the world go round,” he thought, smiling.
Most of the nurses, especially the military ones, were more fun, they were more on his level. One morning, after their shift change, he'd woken to find little messages in places that, well, let’s just say, only his mother when he was a small boy and a few certain ladies in his life had ever visited!
They'd put him in the hospital’s recovery wing, waiting for a date to return to his training unit, when he heard the truth about Jane. The so-called love of his life, who he’d actually agreed to have kids with, had hitched up with the new guy who came in to fill her position at work after she’d been promoted.
“Seems it wasn’t the only thing he was filling,” he cursed.
The thing Dave hated the most was, she didn't even have the balls to come and tell him herself, she got her idiot of a daddy to do it.
“Hope they both get herpes, and daddy’s Aston catches fire,” he mused.
3
Dave had been in the army seven years, having joined up when he was eighteen. It was all down to a dare. He was with the lads down the pub, the weekend after his birthday, when they taunted, “Bet you a pint you won’t go and sign up."
“Don’t dare me!” he thought. “Bugger it, I’ll show them.”
If the truth-be-known, it was the best thing Dave ever did. It got him off the streets, and probably stopped him turning into a thief, or worse still, a dead druggie.
Up to this point, he hadn’t even stubbed a toe, so when he did something, he did it right.
Dave was in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, based at Warminster, RAF Honington. And he drove tanks! He would say, “Basically, if it can move I’ll move it, or give it a bloody good try!”
He made the rank of corporal in just three years and then got busted. He was the unlucky idiot who got caught with the camp bike. Turned out to be the wife of one of the sergeant. Dave got a good going over but gave as good as he got.
“She was a good shag though!” he thought, a smile spreading across his face.
He made a promise to himself while he was serving his time inside, no more getting drunk, and no more getting into other bloke’s wives’ knickers… “Unless they’re gagging for it, or had me cornered,” he mused.
He worked his butt off to get back to corporal, kept to his promise, well, as much as the ladies would let him anyway! Life was starting to be good to him again, until this little hiccup.
Dave had been on a NATO peace-keeping force in Iraq. The unit he was with was over helping the local government to police the area: helping train up the locals to look after themselves.
The day the accident happened, a French team and the team he was on, were sent to investigate a shooting in some outlying buildings. Dave was driving an armoured truck in a convoy of three vehicles: an ambulance, a Viking personnel carrier and his truck. They’d parked outside one of the buildings, having been tasked with cleaning up a massacre.
It was a makeshift hospital a humanitarian charity group from France had set up. The team he was on were documenting anything and everything they saw, in and immediately around the building. They took notes, lots of video and photographs, then had to clean up, making it fit for people to move back into. It was whilst they were doing this that the building was bombed.
Nat filled Dave in on what had happened. “You’d been in the building for about forty-five minutes when the area the team you were on, got attacked."
“Who was it?” Dave asked.
“Two American F18 Super Hornets. They were on patrol in the area when they were tasked with taking the building out. They'd been told extremists, with links to the Taliban, had occupied a building on the outskirts of Baghdad. They had to take the building out with bombs. They were told the area was clear of friendly troops and civilians."
“Someone definitely got that one wrong,” Dave frowned.
Dave started to have nightmares once they’d moved him to the hospital in Peterborough, often waking up at night soaked in a cold sweat. Some nights he’d lay f
or ages, just trying to work out if he was back in Baghdad, or was actually at home.
The doctors informed him he'd be out of action for about a year, having to regain his muscle bulk before he’d be battle fit again but did say he’d be able to leave the hospital in about six to eight weeks.
Right on the button of eight weeks, and they sent Dave back to his unit for re-training. So it was back to Hereford.
“Happy days!” he smiled.
4
Part of his recovery was to be down at the gym every day. Not that he wasn’t fit before, but getting blown up, buried alive and almost cooked, sets you back a bit!
Now, this is where Dave’s life goes off at a tangent again, for better or for worse, he’ll find out. But as expected, it involves a woman… again!
Her name is Poppy, and she’s a physical training instructor. Standing a hundred and eighty centimetres tall, short dark hair, and big brown eyes. She’s a third Dan karate instructor and has completed the Iron Man challenge for the last three years, even coming first last year. She specialises in unarmed combat, tutoring three classes a day.
Dave was in lust as soon as she walked into the classroom, and when she spoke, he was in love! She was a Geordie, just like Cheryl Cole.
Poppy had been assigned to the group Dave was in. Her job was to get them all fit for duty, ASAP.
She started with simple circuits, as she wanted to establish a baseline for the fitness of the group. “Come on you lot. Move!” she shouted. “My old gran can run faster than that, and she’s dead!”
Three of the blokes threw up their breakfast within twenty minutes.
“Jesus. You’re all a bunch of has-beens!”
“Take it easy, Sarge. We’re all half-dead as it is. It won’t take much to finish us off!” Dave squeaked, trying to keep his breakfast down.
“Give me twenty, Roberts!” she ordered.
Dave looked at her, wondering if he'd heard her right. She came over and eye-balled him until he fell to the ground and started pushing.
Putting her foot on his back she growled, holding him down, “Don’t talk to me unless you’re dying, got it, soldier?”
Dave nodded and groaned under her foot. When she moved off, he thought, “God she’s hot!”
They were all getting ready for their second meal of the day, after Poppy had half-killed the group, when she came in and announced, “When you get back from lunch, you’ll all be oot in the pool. So, divvent eat too much, cos, if you hoy-up then you’ll spend the rest of the week cleaning it oot with a teaspoon!”
“What a way with words, but what a result! In the pool, with a fit little body like that!” Dave smiled.
Not to be though, she coached from the edge and revelled in trying to drown them all.
That was eight months ago. Dave and the rest of the group slowly recovered, adding weight and muscle mass. Dave’s scars, his physical ones, started to heal. Whenever he got hot and sweaty though, the itching would drive him crazy. Every day he could be found rubbing his back up against a wall in the gym. The mental one, though, still woke him in the night in a cold sweat.
There were sixteen of them on the course, but that went down to only ten after two months - four of them losing interest and quitting, the other two losing it all together.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder): It’s when a person goes through a terrifying event experience and relives that event, often in the form of nightmares and disturbing recollections of the event.
Every time there was a loud noise, one of the two lads would run to a corner, curl up as small as he could and start to cry. The other lad started screaming and rolling into a ball on the floor. It scared the shit out of Dave and the others.
The physical training’s been tough, but Dave enjoyed every minute of it.
“Just got to get back into the technical side of things now, but I’m nearly ready for duty. It’ll be good to be back in my old unit, having the lads around,” he dreamed.
Poppy and Dave finally got together. She resisted at first, but he wore her down. He used all the time-proven methods: flowers, cards, little teddy bears, and constantly asking her out.
One time he sat outside her window all night and waited for her to wake up, he then knocked and asked her if she wanted breakfast. Some people said Dave was stalking her! Dave's answer to that was, “I'm being thorough and attentive!”
Poppy came around in the end though. Dave knew she would.
They don’t live with each other… yet, but they spend as much time in each other’s beds, and anywhere else they can find! Once getting down and dirty on a coffee table in the officer’s mess one morning. They nearly got caught by a couple of the officers, who’d come down for an early breakfast, before they went off to play with their toys.
Poppy, though, cool as anything, just said, “Morning, Sir. Just checking for serial numbers. Stores want them for an inventory check.”
They just smiled and winked.
5
Dave stood in front of his commander.
“Corporal Roberts. The reason for your demob is purely on operational grounds. Because of the injuries sustained in the incident you are unable to wear the protective gear needed to keep you safe on the battle ground. Therefore, we have to let you go."
Dave’s shoulders slumped as the news hit home, he turned and left the room.
“Unfit for duty, they said. I’d be a liability to myself and the others in my unit. Rubbish!” Dave explained to Poppy, as she sat on his lap and hugged him.
“Eight bloody years of humping and dumping. Yes, sir. No, sir. Stir your bloody tea, sir? And now this. Discarded like a used piece of shitty bum wad. Not that I’m sore about it or anything…. Much!” he scowled to himself.
“Now what?” he asked, “go and join the ranks of the unemployed I suppose.”
“You never know, something might turn up,” Poppy comforted him.
“Bugger it! If I haven’t got a job by next week, I’ll go walkabout, just like Crocodile Dundee. I could be like a British Jack Reacher,” he smiled.
Poppy tried her best trying not to make Dave feel like a charity case. “Something will come along, pet. It’s not as if you can’t work or anything” she encouraged.
He didn’t expect her to have the answers, and he knew she was just as pissed off about all this as he was.
The next morning, Dave went to sign on.
“Well, what a bloody joke that was!” he frowned, sitting down and sipping on a coffee.
Dave had queued up for an hour outside, then ended up sitting next to a bunch of seventeen-year-olds dressed in torn jeans and denim.
“Their idea of a hard day’s work was probably getting out of bed to be here for nine o’clock,” he told Poppy.
The three of them were giving it big and making a lot of noise. The security guard was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, he was struggling to keep control. An older lady asked them to quieten down, only to be told to mind her own business. Dave wasn’t going to say anything until this happened, so he got up and stood in front of them.
Looking them up and down one at a time, he said quietly, but firmly, “If you want, we can take this outside, or, you can do as the lady asked and shut up! Your choice.”
They mumbled something and chose to shut up. Good job really, the mood, Dave was in, he would have probably ended up in jail.
He looked at the lady and smiled, then looked at the security guard. The security guard nodded, and mouthed, “Thanks,” and went and stood at the door again.
Dave sat and waited his turn, in silence this time.
When it got to Dave, he went and sat at the counter to sign on, only to be told to come back tomorrow. Sent away with a bunch of forms they gave him to fill in, just so they could set up an interview for another day.
“What a bloody joke!” he cursed.
When he got back, he was really hacked off! Poppy came over and gave him a big squeeze, she kissed him slowly, a mischievous lo
ok on her face, “I’ve got thirty minutes spare if you want to, you know, do something?” she said, nodding at the bedroom.
She’s one sexy lady. Speedy too. It didn’t take them long to get naked.
6
As they lay getting their breath back, Poppy said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a message for you on the machine. Someone called Bob?”
Dave sat and thought for a few minutes. “Bob! God, I haven’t heard from him for...must be four years!”
After Bob left the army, or should that be, was asked to leave. Dave didn’t know, but it was quick and quiet, he fell off the radar, nobody had heard or seen him since. Everyone assumed that he’d just gone off to be a hermit somewhere. A cave in Wales or something!
Dave skipped down the stairs and played the message.
“Dave. Can you give me a hand with something?”
Short and to the point, no details, just a number to call back on if he was interested.
“Too bloody right I’m interested!” he smiled.
He’d only been out of the army two days and was already going crazy. He rang the number straight-away, Bob must have been waiting for him to ring because it only rang once.
“Bob Harris.”
“Quick and simple,” Dave thought.
“Bob. It’s Dave. Hi, mate,” he said, trying not to sound too eager.
“Dave! I knew you’d ring. How-ya doing, you old scrote?”
“Good! How are you? I haven’t heard from you for a while. We thought you’d gone off shagging sheep in Wales, or something!”
“I’ve been abroad, that’s the reason I’m calling, but anyway, how’s Jane? Still as sexy as ever I hope?”