My Son's in Afghanistan: The Letters Are Mounting Up While He TABs Across Helmand

Our soldier's Mum Mandy gets hysterical waiting for the next phone call from Afghanistan

‘Well I know it’s a beautiful world…but I can’t feel it right now….’ just about sums up this week for me. I’m writing this, sheltered under the safety of my duvet where I have hidden myself for a few moments. Remember the old days, torch light illuminating the ‘just can’t put it down book’?  Well I’m back there with Heidi secreting her bread rolls in the wardrobe…..saving her world. It is quiet now and just...well…peaceful. I’m trying to fit all the pieces together and am battling my weariness to invent yet another coping strategy for my family. A bit like Cherie. Only without the ‘I am soooo… trying to sound poor like you,’  ‘What pay off?’  and… ‘Tony who?’ Someone should point this silly woman to a ship called Dignity and pray like hell that it might actually sail off with her. And take her human rights battalion with her too. Bon Voyage.

Anyone with teenagers will know how much we develop outlandish plots to silence them sometimes. I’ve always, rather vocally I’m afraid, remembered how I felt when I was one of these strange beings. At this moment I wish I had kept silent, earmarked it as utter nonsense, and left them to it in a shop somewhere! I did leave two of them in a post-office once! Quite normal, all things considered. Only not when one of them is away.

It’s been over a week now without any word from Ross. His last call was cut short and lasted less than a minute with an incredibly poor connection.  “Hey!…on night TABs*….long nights mum….and all of 3 Para right in the middle of it all. Taliban everywhere…….” It sounded like a script from a small-bit film.

And his words play over and over in my head. Sheer helplessness fills my head and disturbs me more than I can stand. I have so many unanswered questions and damning scenarios spinning round in my head and it all becomes too much.

Laura knocks, exaggeratedly quietly, on the door. She’s sporting  a crash helmet, family gumshield and the password ‘tea’….  “I’ve written a poem mum….” And I cry all over again. We both do. “Guess what I read?” she asks, wiping her eyes, “Ed Balls is dancing in the Albert Hall,” ……and we roll around laughing and leg kicking, screeching with nigh hysteria.  [Ed: I can only assume this rather eccentric sense of humour was passed on from mother to daughter] We laugh a lot these days at the unbelievable. It makes me secretly think how lucky our kids are. There are so many choices out there that are available to them.

Teachers are being murdered for teaching any different in Afghanistan. If they can find a school to teach in. Over here, we battle to get the pupils in on time. But it’s OK. We have a benefit system to catch those that don’t. Over there they have the Taliban.  Then there is TB’s mission to the Middle-East. They’re all there…but no-one quite knows where it is all going. It’s just costing us shed loads of dosh. And more.

So, another battle over, for today. As for Ross, well there must be loads of letters and parcels piling up for him at Bastion when he gets back from his "night TABs".

[*TAB: Para jargon for Tactical Advance to Battle]

Comments

[William29]

Tabbing - After a few years as a mechanized unit that word sent a shiver through the spine. The KK (company commander) had one of those moments, "we will tab the last ten miles", now that is not a lot, I accept. So I got my section ready to move, the driver one Gdsm M, laid on the mortar hatch, grinning, I suggested that he might wish to join us, "not me drivers are staying with the vehicles", he just should not have grinned like that, there I was working out the fatigue/duty and just about every roster I could think of. This was a day I will never forget, moving downhill fully kitted, the momentum took over, the KK to our front suddenly dug his heels in and stopped, the poor bloody signaller following with an A41 on ten foot whip, stopped, the antenna whipped forward, it felled the KK with a crack across the face! Much amused, we followed our illustrious leader as he communicated in a strange high pitched language with his radio operator. That man knew how to raise the moral.