Recording my first confirmed "kill" of a Taliban had been exhilarating; and calling in the helicopter gunships to pound an enemy position with body-bursting fifty-millimeter shells had been spine-chillingly exciting. It had sent my adrenaline levels to maximum in preparation for the charge through to finish them off at close quarters.
One wasn't meant to enjoy killing other human beings, but I had.
"I suppose it was OK," I said. "Lots of sitting round doing nothing, really. That, and playing cards."
"Did you see anything of the Taliban?" my stepfather asked.
"A little," I said matter-of-factly. "But mostly at a distance."
A distance of about two feet, impaled on my bayonet.
"But didn't you get to do any shooting?" he asked. He made it sound like a day's sport of driven pheasant.
"Some," I said.
I thought back to the day my platoon had been ambushed and outnumbered by the enemy. I had sat atop an armored car, laying down covering fire with a GPMG, a general-purpose machine gun, known to us all as "the gimpy." I had done so much shooting that day that the gimpy's barrel had glowed red-hot.
I could have told them all of it.
I could have told them of the fear. Not so much the fear of being wounded or killed-more the fear of failing to act. The fear of fear itself.
Throughout history, every soldier has asked themselves the same questions: What will I do when the time comes to fight? How will I perform in the face of the enemy? Shall I kill, or be killed? Shall I be courageous, or will I let down my fellow men?
In the modern British Army, much of the officer training is designed to make young men, and young women, behave in a rational and determined manner in extreme conditions and when under huge stress. Command is what they are taught, the ability to command when all hell is breaking loose around them. The command moment, it is called, that moment in time when something dramatic occurs, such as an ambush, or a roadside bomb explosion, the moment when all the men turn and look to their officer-that's you-waiting to be told what to do, and how to react. There's no one else to ask. You have to make the decisions, and men's lives will depend on them.
The training also teaches teamwork and, in particular, reliance. Not reliance on others but the belief that others are reliant on you. When push comes to shove, a soldier doesn't stick his head up and shoot back at the enemy for his Queen and Country. Instead, he does it for his mates, his fellow soldiers all around him who will die if he doesn't.
My biological family might have considered me a loner, but I was not. My platoon was my chosen family, and I had regularly placed myself in extreme danger to protect them from harm.
Eventually, my luck had been bound to run out.
Killing the enemy with joy and gusto might lead an onlooker to believe that the soldier places a low worth on human life. But this would be misleading, and untrue. The death of a comrade, a friend, a brother has the most profound effect on the fighting man. Such moments are revisited time and again with the same question always uppermost: Could I have done anything to save him?
Why him and not me? The guilt of the survivor is ever-present and is expunged only by continuation of the job in hand-the killing of the enemy.
"You're not very talkative," my mother said. "I thought that soldiers liked nothing better than to recount stories of past battles."
"There's not much to tell you, really," I said.
Not much to tell, I thought, that wouldn't put her off her dinner.
"I saw you both on the television today," I said, changing the subject, "at Cheltenham. Good win in the novice chase. Shame about Pharmacist, though. At one point I thought he was going to win as well." I knew that it was not a tactful comment, but I was curious to see their reaction.
My mother kept her eyes down as she absentmindedly pushed a potato around and around on her plate.
"Your mother doesn't want to talk about it," my stepfather said in an attempt to terminate conversation on the topic.
He was unsuccessful.
"Your head lad seems to think the horse was nobbled," I said.
My mother's head came up quickly. "Ian doesn't know what he's talking about," she said angrily. "And he shouldn't have been talking to you."
I hoped that I hadn't dropped Ian into too much hot water. But I wasn't finished yet.
"Shouldn't have been talking to me about what?" I asked.
No reply. My mother went back to studying her plate of food, and my stepfather sat stony-faced across the table from her.
"So are the horses being nobbled?" I asked into the silence.
"No, of course not," my mother said. "Pharmacist simply had a bad day. He'll be fine next time out."
I wondered if she was trying to convince me, or herself.
I stoked the fire a little more. "Ian Norland said it wasn't the first time that your horses haven't run as well as expected."
"Ian knows nothing." She was almost shouting. "We've just had some bad luck of late. Perhaps there's a bit of a bug going round the stable. That's all. It'll pass."
She was getting distressed, and I thought it would be better to lay off, just for a bit.
"And Mrs. Kauri doesn't need you spreading any rumors," my stepfather interjected, somewhat clumsily. My mother gave him a look that was close to contempt.
I also looked at my stepfather, and I wondered what he really thought of his wife still using the name of another man.
Only when the other children at my primary school had asked me why I was Thomas Forsyth, and not Thomas Kauri, had I ever questioned the matter. "My father is Mr. Forsyth," I'd told them. "Then why isn't your mother Mrs. Forsyth?" It had been a good question, and one I hadn't been able to answer.
Mrs. Josephine Kauri had been born Miss Jane Brown and was now, by rights, Mrs. Derek Philips, although woe betide anyone who called her that in her hearing. Since first becoming a bride at seventeen, Josephine Kauri had worn the trousers in each of her three marriages, and it was no coincidence that she had retained the marital home in both of her divorces. From the look she had just delivered across the kitchen table, I thought it might not be too long before her divorce lawyer was again picking up his telephone. Mr. Derek Philips may soon be outstaying his welcome at Kauri House Stables.
We ate in silence for a while, finishing off the chicken casserole that my mother's cleaner-cum-housekeeper had prepared that morning and which had been slow-cooking in the Aga all afternoon. Thankfully, there had been more than enough for an uninvited guest.
But I couldn't resist having one more go.
"So will Pharmacist still run in the Gold Cup?"
I thought my stepfather might kick me under the table, such was the fury in his eyes. My mother, however, was more controlled.
"We'll see," she said, echoing the major from the MOD. "It all depends on how he is in the morning. Until then, I can't say another word."
"Is he not back here yet, then?" I asked, not taking the hint to keep quiet.
"Yes," she said without further explanation.
"And have you been out to see him?" I persisted.
"In the morning," my mother replied brusquely. "I said I'd see how he was in the morning." She swallowed noisily. "Now, please, can we drop the subject?"
Even I didn't have the heart to go on. There were limits to the pleasure one could obtain from other people's distress, and distressed she clearly was. It was not a condition I was used to observing in my mother, who had always seemed to be in complete control of any and every situation. It was more usually a state she created in others rather than suffered from herself.
As Ian Norland had said, something very strange was going on.
I went for a walk outside before going to bed. I had done something similar all my life, and the loss of a foot wasn't going to be allowed to change my lifestyle more than I could help it.
I wandered around the garden and along the concrete path to the stables. A few security lights came on as I moved under the sensors, but no one seemed to care and there was no halting shout. There was no one on stag here, no sentries posted.