I am supposed to be doing something for work tonight. I am soooo in trouble tomorrow morning if I turn up without some documents. Not sure if my boss would accept that I find creative writing far more interesting than report writing. Guess I have to stay up till midnight to sort it. Once I got the bit between my teeth, I've done the Molly's diary on the Bashira day. I may have gone a bit further than Rhubarb intended and not stuck to her brief but I had to get in a bit about MD and CJ's feelings. Please let me know if you think it needs condensing. I did ramble more than I intended.
Here it is.
MOLLY’S DIARY
THE DAY BASHIRA WAS TAKEN AWAY
Today must rate as the worst day ever in my life. When you join the army, you know you could be sent to a war zone at any time and you are sort of prepared for it by those above you, but seeing a young girl strapped into a suicide vest is definitely the stuff nightmares are made of.
I’m sitting in my med tent on my own. I just need some space and I won’t get it with the rest of the lads around. Although they’re in shock too I think, they’re acting like typical men, bluffing it out and pretending they’re all real tough nuts who signed up for all this drama.
I know I’d annoyed Captain James by getting too close to this young girl called Bashira. Men just seem to be able to separate themselves from all this emotional shit. Women think differently. Smurf even said something sarcastic to him about me being the type to bring home a stray donkey from Spain. Well, I’d never been away from London till I came here and there’s no room for any sort of animal at home. It’s enough of a circus with all my brothers and sisters, not to mention my Mum and Dad, but yes, if there was space, I would probably have brought a stray cat or dog back; maybe not a donkey though. Bossman then called me Queen of the Lost Cause.
Bashira is such a lovely little girl – she reminds me so much of my sister, Bella, as they are about the same age. I’ve given her pens and sweets when we’ve seen her whilst we’ve been out on patrol. The Boss wasn’t happy about that either. Smurf thought she was a spy of some sort for the Taliban and even Captain James seemed to think it was possible – after all, she did appear quite a lot when there was trouble. Her father had seen me once playing a game with her and had shouted at her to come away. He’d beaten her up soon afterwards and Bashira and her mother came crying to the FOB, wanting me to dress the cuts. Qaseem had to translate for me but I got the gist of the conversation that the mother thought it was all my fault. Captain James was livid. I could tell by the way the pulse was beating in his neck, even though he was fairly controlled. He eventually relented and let me treat the cuts but he had kept on saying she should be going to her local hospital which it turned out was four hours away. Four hours, can you imagine it? I expected to be severely reprimanded for insisting I at least cleaned up the cuts and all things considered, I got off fairly lightly.
Bashira had given me some intel about an attack at the mountain pass as a result of that. I had to pass it on to James, even though at first I’m not even sure he was very interested as he was in his paddling pool and then the Music Corps arrived. Smurf convinced me we had to tell him so when we did, he dragged us into the Ops Tent with Kinders and Major Beck. He seemed a bit cynical at first, but Major Beck understood more that I had built up a relationship with Bashira and that she had learned to trust me. I never really intended anything if am honest, but it’s just the sort of person I am.
Later on, they’d realised Bashira had been compromised by telling us about the attack in the mountains and the Boss came in at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night and shook me awake as they needed to act on it (I even thought I must have overslept). There were a couple of Afghans in the Ops Tent when I went in with them. They seemed to be the equivalent of Social Services and were going to take Bashira into a safe house in Kabul.
When the whole of Two Section went to find her, we were amazed she wasn’t where we expected. Minutes later though, that moment when we all saw Bashira come out and we shouted at her to lift up part of her headdress, only to see the suicide vest strapped to her, is something I will never be able to forget. I suppose even suicide vest is the wrong description because it was either her father or one of his accomplices who would be trying to detonate it. Everyone was shouting to her to keep still at the same time as Qaseem was on the radio blocking mobile signals and the bomb disposal team was being requested urgently.
I don’t even remember throwing my helmet on the ground and running towards her. It was just instinct. I mean, if you had all these guys in uniform screaming at one of your kids or your young brothers or sisters, you wouldn’t think twice, would you? I was terrified, so think how she must have felt, especially when she didn’t even understand the language properly. Then they all started screaming at me. I wasn’t stupid enough to get hold of her (even if they thought I was) but I did want to keep her calm and as still as possible till Bomb Disposal came along. I can’t even remember what I said really either. You know me, I just witter, and when I’m nervous, I witter even more than usual. What I do remember though is her saying “Am I going to die?” How the hell do you respond to that? I was thinking “If you die, I die as well!” but I really didn’t believe that would have helped any of us. It was the one time I thought carefully before I said the first thing that came into my nut.
Captain James yelled at me to move away and the Bomb Disposal man came to remove the bomb vest. He looked like something from a science fiction film and literally seconds after he’d taken it off, an ASF soldier grabbed her and virtually threw her in their truck. They sped off in a cloud of horrible Afghan dust and that was it – the vest was detonated – and we were left wondering what on earth we had just witnessed. It doesn’t bear thinking about what would have happened if Badrai or whoever had detonated it himself. Carnage without a doubt.
Captain James has just gone now as well. He claimed he got something in his eye after the vest was detonated. I did the necessary with the eyewash kit we have but you know what? I’m not even sure he had anything in his eye – I think it might have been an excuse just to come in. I’ve actually thought this for a bit now – those blisters haven’t really needed daily treatment but who am I to tell him not to be so soft. I have to confess between you and me that I’ve fancied him for a while. I can’t remember the exact time because I tried to ignore it for ages. I had buried it in my “not to be thought of until I’m back home” memory box. It certainly didn’t help when you would see him working out in our little gym with his top off. He could do a Diet Coke advert any day!
In the beginning, he gave me a hard time and he seemed to delight in humiliating me but it all changed after Smurf nearly got himself blown up and I treated his injuries, ignoring all his orders not to go up in the helicopter back to Bastion. He sat with me for a while tonight after I’d cleaned his eye and we talked a bit about what happened with Bashira.
I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to react. I know what I want to do (there’s still a bit of the pre-Army Molly Dawes in there somewhere) but if I tested the waters, I could end up in really serious trouble, as could he. Stuff like this is completely forbidden. Mind you, we had to rehearse our duet earlier with Dangles and I had to be really careful not to give anything away, which is difficult when you are singing a duet and I had to keep holding the microphone with him. I might need to be careful in front of Dangles too. For a man, he may be more perceptive than I thought. He had a gleam in his eye watching us when we were practising. I’ll let you know how it goes in front of everyone tonight. Singing isn’t really me – I can do it with a karaoke machine after a few drinks but that’s about it – and there’s nothing even remotely alcoholic out here except in some of the antiseptic wipes!