Two Sons in a War Zone E-Book

Stephen Wynn

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

When soldiers go to war, what do their families and friends experience? There is huge public support for the military, who risk their lives in faraway war zones, but do we really have any idea what their 'nearest and dearest' go through while the troops are away? This book started out as a diary of a year in the life of Stephen Wynn, a police officer who happens to have two sons in the military. The diary was his mechanism for coping with the passion, distress and rage he felt while his sons - Luke and Ross - were on active service in Afghanistan. Two Sons in a War Zone is his compelling true story, illustrating the raw inner conflict between one man's pride for his sons and their chosen profession, and his natural fears for their safety. In vivid, everyday language he describes the intense experiences - the joys and sorrows - of being a 'loved one' at home, whilst his sons battle a deadly foe in gruelling and treacherous conditions. Stephen describes Luke's and Ross's personal stories - why they joined the military and how they relate to the work - and quotes from private letters and documents. Both sons are injured whilst on their first tour of duty (one narrowly escaping serious harm from a bullet wound) but thankfully they return safely home. Nobody reading this book will have any doubt about the sacrifices made by soldiers who go to war, as well as the anguish their loved ones experience at home. 'I promised myself that I would not hide my feelings from anyone. I would not be wilfully ignorant of the risks my sons were facing out there. Though they were men, to me they were still boys, and they would be facing boys like themselves; boys, and men younger than me, who would shoot at them. Knowing this, how would I get through a single day? Would I have to bottle up how I felt? No, I'd be open, and honest...'

Leseprobe

STEPHEN WYNN was born in Leeds in 1958. He has been a police officer since 1983, specializing twice during his service: first for nine years as a member of a specialist firearms unit and, for the last eleven years, as youth liaison officer working to keep youngsters away from criminality. For the past seven years he has been married to Tanya, his partner and best friend, and they live in Essex with four very lively German Shepherd dogs. Stephen has three children: Luke aged 23 and Ross aged 22—both currently serving in the military—and Aimee, who is aged 10. Stephen’s main hobbies are football (he supports Leeds United Football Club) and writing (he has several fictional projects in various stages of development). He describes himself as a straightforward and uncomplicated person.

TWO SONS IN A WAR ZONE

AFGHANISTAN: THE TRUE STORY OF A FATHER’S CONFLICT

Stephen Wynn

Clairview Books Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ES

www.clairviewbooks.com

Published by Clairview 2012

© Stephen Wynn 2010

Stephen Wynn asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 905570 49 2

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Prologue

1. Our Background

2. Strung Out at the End of a Phone: Part One

3. Ross’s Story

4. Strung Out at the End of a Phone: Part Two

5. Luke’s Story

6. Two Sons—Two Ceremonies

7. Letters Home

8. How Was It For Them?

9. Why Are We There?

Acronyms

BRF

Brigade Recce Force

CID

Criminal Investigation Department

CTC

Commando Training Centre

ECM

Electronic countermeasure

FMOs

Force Medical Officers

FOB

Forward Operating Base

FSU

Force Support Unit

IED

Improvised Explosive Device

ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

KAF

Kandahar Air Field

MC

Military Cross

MOD

Ministry of Defence

PRMC

Potential Royal Marine Course

R & R

Rest and Recuperation

RPG

Rocket Propelled Grenade

SFSG

Special Forces Support Group

VCP

Vehicle Check Point

This book is dedicated to the memory of my late mother, Angela Wynn, who passed away on 4 January 2010, two days shy of her 84th birthday. She was a truly remarkable woman and a wonderful mother to myself and my sister Teresa.

She only discovered the joy of reading in her early 70s and was so looking forward to reading this book, written by her son and about her grandsons. Sadly she never got to read it, although if heaven has a copy in its library, I’m sure she will.

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge and give due credit to the following people for their time, effort, assistance and friendship through the ordeal this book records.

Firstly, my two sons, Luke and Ross, without whom this book would never have been written. Guys, I love you both very much indeed. May your God be with you and keep you safe always.

Laura Anderson: Thank you for the positive comments and advice that you gave me at the beginning when this book was still very much a dream. Your honesty was much appreciated.

Humphrey Price, for his advice and support with the book and the direction that he believed it should take.

Matthew Barton, for his sensible and sensitive editing.

Ray Williams, MBE: Thanks for your support, sense of humour and concern along the way. It was a big help. You now know an author...

Darren Griffin, BBATIT—which stands for Bitten By A Tiger in Thailand: Thanks for being a good mate. We have had some good laughs along the way.

My publisher Sevak Gulbekian, for having enough belief in my story to publish this book. A true gentleman.

My daughter Aimee: I love you very much and I will write the ‘But Mum’ books one day...

And finally, Tanya, my loving wife: Thank you for your continual support and love—and I don’t just mean while writing this book. You are one of life’s really nice, genuine, caring people who bring out the best in everybody you touch. With you, life is a stroll in the park, and there’s no such thing as a bad day. I love you very much and always will.

Prologue

This book started out as a diary of one year in my life, as a mechanism for coping with the passion, distress and rage I felt while my sons were on active service in Afghanistan. It helped give me back some control over the impotent situation I found myself in, which was not of my own making.

I’m not one to bottle up what’s inside me, and never have been. Nor am I someone who sits about and examines every feeling, then bores everyone else rigid by talking about it. I was brought up to deal with things myself. As a man, I learned, you went through something, and found some way to express yourself—when I was younger, football was my outlet—and didn’t moan on about it to all and sundry.

Well this was different. I promised myself that I would not hide my feelings from anyone. I would not be wilfully ignorant of the risks my sons were facing out there. Though they were men, to me they were still boys, and they would be facing boys like themselves—boys, and men younger than me, who would shoot at them. Knowing this, how would I get through a single day? Would I have to bottle up how I felt? No, I’d be open, and honest. I wasn’t planning to cry openly, but I was ready to be upfront about my feelings, not waste energy hiding them.

I flattened myself against the wall, my hands sweaty as I gripped the stock of my Heckler & Koch MP5 semi-automatic carbine. I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest as I stood still, waiting to hear something—any indication that I’d been spotted. After a moment I felt safe to move again. I slid along the bricks, reaching the corner which—slowly, very slowly—I peered round. Ahead, almost directly in front of me and no more than 40 metres away, the dark windows of the house we’d been told to target seemed like eyes boring into me, waiting to see what I would do next. Any second now and I would have to move. The only chance I had was to be ready when whoever was in there took aim at me. I pulled my head back round the corner and took a deep breath, needing to be completely focused.

I crouched down slowly until I had one knee on the ground, my leg bent behind it so that I could steady myself into the perfect firing position before I shot. It had been drummed into us: get yourself into a triangular position, it’s the most stable there is, one leg down, the other up, your upper body resting against a solid surface—then ready yourself to shoot. This is fine, assuming of course that you’re not yourself a target at the same time. So far, and as far as I knew, I wasn’t.

The surrounding ground was dry now and dusty as I knelt there; I had been moving slowly to prevent any dust rising up, not because it might identify my position, but so it wouldn’t make me sneeze—a giveaway. The whole place was tatty but clean; there was nothing lying about in the roadway that shouldn’t be there.

I checked the ground ahead of me for any sign of sticks or anything else that might make a noise when I leaned round the corner again. Stones would also be painful if I knelt on one of them unexpectedly. I settled more tightly into my position, holding it while I waited for the inevitable moment to come. I didn’t need to look to my right or left to know that my colleagues were there alongside me, also in safe hiding positions, also readying themselves for the attack. They too had their targets; they too would wait until called upon to return fire. If I wanted, or needed to, I could have spoken with them, but we’d been told to be silent in our assault on the position, so silent we were.

We’d also been told to be careful. This was someone’s home, after all, not a base for soldiers, and not everyone we saw would be a target—they might easily be a child, a woman, or maybe an old man. We would have to make our minds up in moments briefer than seconds whether or not to open fire. If we got this wrong and shot an innocent person, we’d not only have to be able to justify our actions and deal with the immediate consequences but also live with it for the rest of our lives.

I carefully lifted my gun to my shoulder, pressing the stock against myself hard and resting my cheek on the cold metal so that I could look down the sights. There at the end was the window, its darkness like a presence calling me. I felt my finger twitch on the trigger, an indication, like the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, that something was about to happen. And then—faster than I could fully register—something appeared in the window, and instinctively I...

... jerked awake. I was back, in my own bed, far away from that place and time. I knew why I was thinking about it now, why the place had haunted my recent dreams. I had been there some years before; but my son Ross was there only a few weeks back. And tomorrow—today, probably—Ross was off to a place where that kind of tense confrontation would be for real, not an exercise. He was going to Afghanistan, and there was nothing I could do to help him through it.

I lay in my bed, full of confused and confusing feelings. The dream was of my time in the training village. I had wanted to know what it would be like for him, over there in Helmand Province, and so in my sleep I’d tried to put myself in his shoes. What would he go through? How would he cope? I closed my eyes again and daydreamed about the rapid response training I’d done, only this time I imagined it was warmer—an alien heat—that smelt differently, and was noisier; and the people alongside me were in army, not police uniforms.

It didn’t work. I had no idea what Ross would go through, even though I felt I knew something about it from my own experience. The training village must have been a leftover from the Second World War; it was very basic, cold and dreary, in need of a good lick of paint. The village part of it could have been a town centre anywhere in the country—it certainly felt real to me at the time—while the only obvious difference from any other high street was a tower at the centre of the complex where the training staff had a good view of what was going on. If the trainees were getting something wrong they could inform us straight away, so we could correct it and not have to wait for a debrief at the end.

In my half-awake state, I found myself wanting to remember more about my own experience. It was the closest I was going to get to what Ross would have to go through in a foreign country. Knowing that this was the limit of my understanding came near to driving me mad with frustration.

So there I was, the night before one of my sons flew into a war zone, with the aim of putting himself in danger—which was almost too much for me to contemplate, let alone say out loud—and I was lying in bed, dreaming, for the first time in ages, about being back in the Force Support Unit (the armed response branch of the Essex Police Force) and our training all those years ago in some run-down army camp.

We were there for two or three days, carrying out our exercises in the village itself, and then storming an old house. We trained on live firing ranges which stretched for miles; the metal targets fell backwards with every double tap I fired—two rounds in quick succession. I imagined Ross had enjoyed it too; I have no idea if they made the training tougher for the Paras, with people shooting back at them, that sort of thing. I imagined him strolling confidently down the main street, his gun resting on his crossed arms in front of his chest as he glanced carefully about him.

When I did this training, the boys were both very young. When they were a little older I separated from their mum, and decided then that I had to leave the FSU and get a different position within the force so that I was there for them more often.

For a while I lay without moving in bed, just staring into the dark, thinking back to Ross’s childhood. I tried to recall the moment I’d first held him in my arms. He had the same birthday as my late father—9 March. The image of Ross as a baby wouldn’t come to me. The picture blurred into that of my more recently born daughter Aimee, and when I tried to think of a tiny, newborn Ross it somehow shifted into a collage of moments from Ross’s childhood—his first days at school, him falling asleep and me carrying him up to bed, the look of terror on his face when I pushed his little bike fast down a grassy bank—but even those pictures wouldn’t stay still in my mind’s eye. Instead I saw the times that I’d been a referee, taking charge of the football games that he played with his mates. I had tried to be fair as a ref but in endeavouring to do so I’d sometimes go too far the other way, and lean to the opposing team, especially when faced with a difficult decision. When the games were over I’d take Ross aside to tell him what I thought of his performance, how he’d played, how well he’d done, and where he could improve his game.

These moments didn’t always go well, and while I lay there in my bed I tried to recall myself standing there alongside him, my hand resting gently on his small shoulder, and some conversation more satisfactory than the usual one in which Ross sulked and I ended up feeling more fed up than when I’d started. But even though I could still feel his flesh and bone under my hand, I couldn’t see his face as it was then. Somehow the grown-up Ross, wearing his customary smile, kept surfacing instead.

I thought about the times we’d argued, when he had been stubborn—or was it me? That didn’t do it either: I couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. I didn’t want to, of course, I wanted him smiling and happy, it was just that I also wanted to try and remain clear on everything I could about him, print everything I could on my memory—because I never knew if I’d get another chance to do so.

I’d spent some of the day before with Ross. Earlier, my wife Tanya had joined us for breakfast, a fry-up in Basildon town centre. It was a nice occasion. I have no idea what Ross was going through himself that day; I only know about my own wide range of emotions. I was nervous, anxious, excited and scared as well. I imagine he was feeling the same, but there was a lot that had to remain unsaid. As much as I did not want to think about it or even admit it to myself, I knew in the back of my mind that this might just be the last time I would ever see him. No parent ever wants to think that they might have to bury one of their own children; parents die before their children do, that’s simply the deal.

After breakfast Ross went off to see his mum, and some mates, and get a few last things sorted out. He came round as planned in the evening, to give me his dreaded ‘death letter’, that I would only ever have to open in the event of his death.

At the railway station we stood in silence, looking at each other. I don’t suppose there have been many times when I’ve just stopped whatever I was doing and looked at someone while they looked back at me. Usually there’s something else going on, chatter, distractions of all sorts; but not now. I just stared at him and he stared back. I certainly knew how I was feeling and I could see from the emotion and tears in Ross’s eyes that he must be feeling the same way. After a few moments I had to break the tension: I bent forward and we clasped in a manly hug. The hug became a squeeze, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. I kissed the side of his face where I had kissed him the first time I ever held him in my arms, all those years ago, moments after he was born.

I didn’t want to cry in front of him but I knew it would happen. Deep down I am just a big softy and I always get emotional at such moments. I blew out a couple of long breaths to try and stop myself from blubbing like a baby, shook him by the hand, and said, ‘Ross, I love you very much indeed.’ He smiled back and said, ‘Dad, I love you too.’ He picked up his kitbag, looked at me, crossed the road, then turned and waved one last time before disappearing into the railway station.

I had nothing left in me then. I was empty and felt naked as the day I was born. Every sinew in my body was ordering me to stride after Ross, to stop him from going, to walk alongside him, to stand in harm’s way for him: and I couldn’t. This was his job, his life now, not mine, and I could do no more than stand and watch him leave. In my bed, in the early hours of the morning, I realized that what I’d gone through had exhausted me. The emotions churning through me had sapped my energy; but even so, here I was, wide awake. My sons were grown up enough now to stand and fight for themselves, and I was no longer there to stand alongside them.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling this but all the same there’s no manual that told me what to do when confronted by it—the reality, I suppose, of my own ageing as well as the gradual maturing of my two sons. It’s hard enough confronting the realities of getting older, of being stouter and slower than I was 30 years before, without the sensation of fear also creeping in when thinking about my boys. I might have expected to be proudly standing by as they made their way through life, steering them away from some of the mistakes that I’d made, watching them get jobs, meet girls, maybe even take steps towards some thing more permanent. That was something I could have seen coming. But this? Being the parent of not one but two sons heading out to war, of boys becoming men in moments and not years—how was I going to deal with this, at the distance now forced on me? The limited experience I’d had so far of the relationship between the family and the armed forces, the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, didn’t suggest that either organization would have too much in the way of help or advice to offer me. I’d have to find a way through all of this by myself, leaning when I needed to on those closest to me.

I thought again about the training village. I wondered how Ross had got on when he’d been there. Had he succeeded in his training? Had he done well? I tried once more to see myself there, alongside him: the two of us together, maybe Luke on my other side. I tried to will that image to take some form of reality for me, as though I could be with them in Afghanistan, in spirit. That’s the picture that flashed clearly into my head as I lay there. Where they walked I would walk too.

1

Our Background

My dad, David Wynn, was a bus driver in Leeds. When he was offered a similar job and, more importantly, a brand new three-bedroomed house to go with it, we all upped and moved to the new town of Basildon in Essex, where he became a bus driver with the Eastern National Bus Company. I was only six months old at the time, born in 1958, four years after my sister Teresa.

For the first time in their lives my parents had all mod cons including central heating, hot and cold running water, a fully plumbed-in bath and an indoor toilet. They must have felt like they’d landed on their feet.

Ours was a normal household for the time: dad went out to work while Angela, my mum, stayed at home and looked after the kids and kept the house in order. Mum always made sure that my sister and I were ready for school on time and smartly turned out. She saw that our shoes were nicely polished and that my shirts and my sister’s blouses were whiter than white.

Dad’s dinner was always ready and waiting for him when he got home. In those days it was still rare for mothers to go out to work. A man was meant to provide for his family.

Basildon was one of the many new towns that sprang up all around London after the end of the Second World War to accommodate the overspill from London’s ageing slums. When we moved there, building was still going on everywhere, and great swathes of it were still unfinished. It was simply fantastic to know that we were the only people who had ever lived in our house. I felt like bloody royalty.

By the time I was eight, my dad could still only afford an old second-hand car: a bottle-green Morris Minor with an 1100 cc engine. But it really felt good to have a father who owned a car we could all go out in together. In those days very few families could afford one. All of my mates were jealous. There was only one other family in our street with a car at the time. I remember going out in it one Sunday afternoon with my mum, dad and my older sister to visit an aunt. You could see the curtains twitching in all kitchen windows as we drove away.

I had a great childhood: parents who loved and cared for me, plenty of mates, places to play, trees to climb, green areas to play football in. Time seemed to stretch on for ever, in an eternal present, especially during the long summer holidays.

But this world collapsed when my father died suddenly when I was only 12, in December 1970. The morning he died was very cold I remember. I can still see him bending over his Morris Minor, trying to get it started—which I had seen him do so many times before. If for any reason my father couldn’t start the car, he had to insert a cranking handle into the engine through a hole in the front grill. He would keep turning until the car started.

The bus garage where he started work each day was only about five minutes’ drive from our home, but he was running late for his morning shift and the car took its time to start.

When he arrived at work he suddenly felt unwell as he got out of the car. He went into the main office and told his boss that he really didn’t feel too good at all, that he was going to take himself off home sick, and asked if the boss would be kind enough to go and get him his wages.

It was a Thursday, because that was the day my dad got paid. In those days people were paid weekly in cash, which came in a neat, brown envelope.

As his boss left the office to get his wages, my dad fell off the stool he was sitting on, and was dead before he hit the floor.

I still often stop and think of the horror and carnage that could have been caused if he had died at the wheel of his bus, whilst driving it down a busy road with lots of people on board.

Dad died at about eleven in the morning but I wasn’t told about it till four o’clock that afternoon. I was coming home from school with a mate of mine who only lived a few doors away from me in the same street. We were laughing and joking, talking about what we were going to get up to after our dinners and homework.

All of a sudden an uncle of mine emerged from the front door of our house and started walking towards us. I remember thinking that it was a bit strange as my uncle wasn’t usually at our house at that time of day. Our families socialized with each other but that would normally be over the weekend and in the evenings. My uncle was a bus conductor who often worked on the same bus with dad. In fact, my dad got him his job. His face was pale and expressionless now as he looked at me.

‘Say cheerio to your friend, Stephen,’ he said in a monotone.

‘Hi, Uncle Mark. What are you doing here?’ I asked him, starting to feel slightly uneasy but not knowing why.

‘Stephen, listen to me carefully,’ he said leaning forward and gently taking hold of my arm. ‘I am very sorry, and there is no easy way of saying this, but your father has died.’

Everything suddenly went eerily quiet after that. I could see his lips moving but I just couldn’t hear anything he was saying to me. He took hold of my hand and walked me back home. He opened the front door and then it all hit me. The house was packed with neighbours, friends and relatives. They were everywhere: in the kitchen, the hallway, the garden and the living room. My mum was sitting in her favourite armchair next to the fireplace. Her eyes were red and swollen and she was holding a white handkerchief to her face like a soldier surrendering after a hard battle. One of our next-door neighbours, Beryl, had an arm round mum’s shoulder.

As I moved around the house I could see all these faces looking at me. Some I recognized and some I didn’t. Some spoke words of condolence. Some didn’t know what to say and simply settled for the smile you give people when you are not sure what to say.

I made my way round the house in a daze, still trying to take in what was going on. I felt like I was in one of those movies where the camera scans from side to side as it makes its way through a crowd of people and they all stare back. Everybody seemed to be drinking a cup of tea or coffee. I didn’t know that we had so many cups and mugs in the house. Everyone who was smoking was polite enough to go out into the back garden to do so. Wherever I appeared, the conversation would stop and only start up again once I had moved past. I was patted on the head or stroked on the arm by the men and hugged tightly by the women—some with massive bosoms, others who nearly took my eye out with their lighted cigarette.

Eventually I managed to get upstairs to the safety of my bedroom. I closed the door behind me and burst into tears. The enormity of what was going on, the realization that my dad was dead and wasn’t coming back, hit me like a hurricane. I lay on my bed and just cried.

The pain of that loss stayed with me for many years. In the days, weeks and months after his death I kept thinking that it was all a bad dream and that at any moment he might walk back in through the front door and everything would return to normal. These days the pain has long since gone, and all I have are pleasant memories of those precious years spent with my father, but I will never forget him and he is in my thoughts everyday.

My teenage years were a very strange time for me. I would continually hear my mates talking about the different things they did with their dads, such as fishing, playing football or going to the pictures, and the enjoyment this gave them. These were experiences that I unfortunately never had; but years later, when my sons were teenagers, I was able at long last to enjoy such experiences with them, possibly sometimes doing so even more than they wanted—though, bless them, they never complained.

I’ve described my feelings about my father and his death at some length because this might help explain my close emotional involvement with my boys, my desire to be there for them and with them. Perhaps we always try to compensate in the next generation for the lack we experienced in a previous one. But there are other connections too, which I only discovered later when I tried to find out more about my dad’s life—for my father, like my sons, was in the Army.

He served in the British Army as a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps where he was a private. In 1999, I received my father’s statement of service record from the Ministry of Defence records department, with the following testimonial attached: