‘Guilt – even innocent guilt – is an evil thing’: how soldiers struggle to cope when they come home
The Guardian
Matthew Green
October 7, 2015
Many ex-servicemen suffering from combat stress are damaged not by a traumatic event, but by the shock of returning from war. When they fall prey to insomnia, guilt, anxiety and isolation, the military, it seems, does not have all the answers
AJ did not want to leave but he knew he had no choice: the Chinooks only landed every two weeks and would be on the ground for no more than 10 seconds. As the helicopter raced across the hard-packed desert, he could not know that his hardest battle lay ahead.
The faces of the two young Afghan policemen would never leave him. They had both been shot while defending their position and bled to death in the back of a trailer as AJ and a medic tried to staunch their wounds. They could not have been more than 17 years old. AJ, as the former Royal Marine asked me to call him, was on his second deployment to Afghanistan. The first tour, in 2001, had been quiet. Five years later, his unit, 45 Commando, was engaged in fierce fighting with the Taliban outside the town of Gereshk. As a sniper, AJ acted as lookout for the other marines, carefully spotting enemy positions and either calling in mortar fire or counting down from three, according to his training, and pulling the trigger.
After the battle at Gereshk, AJ’s unit was deployed to Sangin, a small town on the Helmand river. It was a Taliban stronghold, and soldiers from the Parachute Regiment had narrowly managed to hold the town centre after intense fighting a few months before. AJ’s unit was based 4km away in an outpost known as FOB (Forward Operating Base) Robinson, where an outer ring of earth-filled wire cages formed the first line of defence. The marines bedded down in buildings in an inner circle nicknamed the Dust Bowl. A tower made of mud bricks stood in the centre and AJ took turns with the other snipers to man a makeshift bunker on the top, cradling their rifles and scanning the dun-coloured landscape for any sign of Taliban fighters.
Nowhere in Sangin was safe, but the tower was particularly exposed. FOB Robinson had been set up on a slope, giving the Taliban concealed in the town a clear aim into its interior. They exploited the site’s weakness to the full, hammering the base with 120mm mortars that made the ground shake. Sometimes as many as 30 rounds would slam into the ground in a single attack.
While other marines took cover, AJ and his sniper team would remain on the tower – searching the surrounding patchwork of terrain for any sign of the enemy. Each time he heard the crump of a mortar being fired, AJ flinched, suspended for 30 seconds, waiting. It was only when he heard an ear-splitting blast as the shell struck home that he knew he was still alive.
On his last day as a marine, AJ’s wife went to work. He got up from the kitchen table and found himself walking towards the garage door intent on ending it all. A silent voice was calling: “Everything will be easy if you come with me.”
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