I STUFFED MY BERGEN FULL of dusty clothes, plus two souvenirs: a rug bought in a bazaar, a 30-mm shell casing from the Apache.
The first week of 2013.
Before I could get onto the plane with my fellow soldiers I went into a tent and sat in the one empty chair.
The obligatory exit interview.
The chosen reporter asked what I’d done in Afghanistan. I told him.
He asked if I’d fired on the enemy.
What? Yes.
His head went back. Surprised.
What did he think we were doing over here? Selling magazine subscriptions?
He asked if I’d killed anyone.
Yes…
Again, surprised.
I tried to explain: It’s a war, mate, you know?
The conversation came around to the press. I told the reporter that I thought the British press was crap, particularly with regard to my brother and sister-in-law, who’d just announced that they were pregnant, and were subsequently being besieged.
They deserve to have their baby in peace, I said.
I admitted that my father had begged me to stop thinking about the press, to not read the papers. I admitted that I felt guilty every time I did, because it made me complicit. Everyone’s guilty for buying the newspapers. But hopefully no one actually believes what’s in them.
But of course they did. People did believe, and that was the whole problem. Britons, among the most literate people on the planet, were also the most credulous. Even if they didn’t believe every word, there was always that residue of wonder. Hmm, where there’s smoke there must be fire…Even if a falsehood was disproved, debunked beyond all doubt, that residue of initial belief remained.
Especially if the falsehood was negative. Of all human biases, “negativity bias” is the most indelible. It’s baked into our brains. Privilege the negative, prioritize the negative—that’s how our ancestors survived. That’s what the bloody papers count on, I wanted to say.
But didn’t. It wasn’t that kind of discussion. Wasn’t a discussion at all.
The reporter was keen to move on, to ask about Vegas.
Naughty Harry, eh? Hooray Harry.
I felt a mix of complicated emotions about saying goodbye to Afghanistan, but I couldn’t wait to say goodbye to this chap.
First, I flew with my squadron to Cyprus, for what the Army called “decompression.” I hadn’t had any mandated decompression after my last tour, so I was excited, though not as much as my bodyguards. Finally! We can have a bloody cold beer!
Everyone was issued exactly two cans. No more. I didn’t like beer, so I handed mine over to a soldier who looked like he needed it more than me. He reacted as if I’d given him a Rolex.
We were then taken to a comedy show. Attendance was quasi-mandatory. Whoever organized it had had good intentions: a bit of levity after a tour of hell. And, to be fair, some of us did laugh. But most didn’t. We were struggling and didn’t know we were struggling. We had memories to process, mental wounds to heal, existential questions to sort. (We’d been told that a padre was available if we needed to talk, but I remember no one going near him.) So we just sat at the comedy show in the same way we’d sat in the VHR tent. In a state of suspended animation. Waiting.
I felt bad for those comedians. One tough gig.
Before we left Cyprus someone told me I was all over the papers. Oh yeah?
The interview.
Shit. I’d completely forgotten.
Apparently I’d caused quite a stir by admitting that I’d killed people. In a war.
I was criticized up and down for being…a killer? And being blithe about it.
I’d mentioned, in passing, that the Apache controls were reminiscent of video-game controls. And thus:
Harry compares killing to video game!
I threw down the paper. Where was that padre?
