I got up and walked silently towards the fire escape I’d located on my earlier recce. My inner radar was alert for any signs from the nurses that they suspected my behaviour might be unusual in any way. With a last glance at the only office that had a view of the fire escape, I slowly eased up the quick-release bar, careful to avoid making any metallic clunks, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the studded black metal platform. I took a deep breath of fresh air with relish. Then, silently easing the door to behind me, I climbed swiftly and noiselessly down the latticed iron treads, as cautiously as if I were moving through the jungle under threat of an enemy ambush. I hurried across the grassy area surrounding the hospital and strode confidently along the nearby street.
Once inside the museum, I fixed my eyes intently on the gun for so long that the rest of my surroundings began to melt into the background. The other artefacts on display, the other visitors walking around, the moustachioed security man dozing in the chair in the corner of the overheated room, arms folded, his head tilting forward and threatening to cast off his peaked cap at any moment, everything else faded away into the distance.
I scrutinized the gleaming barrel on the twenty-five-pounder. I smiled to myself as I recollected that it had certainly been in no showpiece condition when I last saw it, pumping out a continuous barrage of roaring shells. Covered in dust and oil, riddled with bullet marks, and with the cross-country tyres deflated and shredded, it had been in real shit order. It was the last artillery gun of its type to be used by British troops in action. And what action it had been! A heroic, cataclysmic struggle, the final decisive encounter with the Communist Adoo pouring down from the Jebel like lemmings all those years ago. And yet it seemed like only yesterday. As my mind drifted back, the confused, urgent jumble of battle sounds rang in my ears again, faintly at first like the sound of distant surf, and then gradually getting louder: the whoosh of mortars and the thump of artillery; the hailstone rattle of machine guns and the whip-crack of rifles; the shouts and the screams, the groans and the gasps, the clamour, the cries and the curses of the men caught up in the middle of it all.
And as I continued to stare, a picture began to take shape in my mind’s eye, a painting by the artist David Shepherd. A print of it hung on my wall back home in Hereford, and I’d spent many a nostalgic moment gazing at it. It depicted three soldiers in a gun pit huddled around the breech of the twenty-five-pounder, with the Mirbat Fort under siege on the skyline. I studied the group of three men again now in my imagination and reeled off the litany I’d intoned so many times before: he’s dead, he’s dead, and his back is so badly scarred with gunshot wounds it looks like an OS map of the Brecon Beacons, an aerial photo of Crewe sidings. I was the lucky survivor. I could have been the fourth man. The situation was desperate. Volunteers were called for. I stood forward but I was turned down. I was needed to man the radio set. My mate went instead. He was a good mate.
They were all good mates. I owe it to you lads to win through again.
I felt reassured. I’d found a reference point. This was what was real – the adventure, the danger, the humour, the camaraderie under fire; not the alien environment of Ward 11.
I returned to the hospital hoping to slip back into the routine as if nothing had happened. It was too much to expect. I was immediately confronted by one of the nurses. He was at 50,000 feet.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘The Woolwich Museum.’
‘Like hell you have.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know damn well what I mean. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’
‘No way! There’s no pub around here anyway. I’ve done a recce.’
‘Don’t try and be clever with me. You’ve got some booze stashed in the boot of your car, haven’t you? I know your type.’
‘You’re wrong, mate. I’ve been to see the Mirbat gun.’
‘I’ve never heard of the Mirbat gun. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Right! Into the office – I’m going to breathalyse you.’
It was a real breathalyser, just like the ones the police use. As I put the mouthpiece to my lips and exhaled deeply, I thought of all the times I’d evaded the local police back in Hereford after wild nights in the PalU-Drin Club. Was my luck about to run out in the ignominious surroundings of Ward 11? We both stared at the contraption in silence waiting for the result.
Negative.
‘There must be something wrong with this one,’ he said, squinting at the digital read-out. ‘We’ll have to do it again.’
Negative result once more.
‘I still don’t believe your story. You can explain your case to the Major.’
I was whistled in to see the Major, the top military psychiatrist. I went through my story again, but was noisily interrupted.
‘What battle of Mirbat? I’ve never heard of it! You’ve made it up. You’ve picked up the name from a newspaper and fabricated some cockand-bull story. You’re having delusions.’
‘You could easily check it out, sir.’ I could barely disguise the latent contempt in the word.
The Major hesitated, looked me up and down, then said, ‘All right, I will check it out. But if we find out you are lying…’ His voice tailed off as he shot me an intimidating glare.
I wandered back to my bed. I was confident. I wasn’t going to let my mates down. No way was I hallucinating. Mirbat was no figment of a fevered imagination, no creation of a bullet-crazed brain. 19 July 1972. Mirbat was real all right, as real as the roar that flowed in over the breeze – London’s pulse and heartbeat. And what was it that kept the heart of the metropolis beating? What was it that flowed through its veins, vessels and arteries? Oil! Oil to fire the generating stations, oil to power the lorries, oil to light the streets, oil to heat the buildings, oil to insulate the homes and keep the inhabitants in their cocoon of cosiness and comfort. And from where did it flow, that oil, where did it spring up? Arabia, where life was harsh, food was poor, shelter was scarce; where the monsoon was a continual scourge and mosquitoes a constant enemy; where, simply, people froze when it was cold and scorched when it was hot. Arabia, where to ensure the free flow of that precious stream I and my mates had undergone rigour, hardship and danger for months on end, fighting alongside tribesmen loyal to the Sultan. Some of my best friends had fallen in that inhospitable terrain, their life-blood seeping through the sand to mingle with the black liquid that even now, as I lay on my bed, was pumping through the nation’s heart.
I thought again of David Shepherd’s painting of the twenty-fivepounder, and then I remembered the plaque on the wall at home next to it. The plaque was inscribed with words from Henry V:
I remembered all right. I remembered what feats we did that day.
9
The Battle of Mirbat
After a while I closed my eyes and started to descend into a fitful sleep. I remember thinking that I would only need to survive a few more days of this routine, the creeping listlessness that came with the drawn-out activity, the sudden threat that came with the odd unexpected attack, and then it would be back home, back to what I knew, back to get on with the rest of my life. Monotony was making a fierce assault, but strong willpower reinforced by endless hours of rigorous training was putting up determined defences. Whatever happened, I would give a good account of myself. I wasn’t going to let my mates down at any cost. That was the single most important thought I held fast in my mind. Like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to driftwood, I knew that, come calm or storm, I would pull through if I could just hold onto the one thing I knew was solid.