The Long Way Home

01:42am Local Time, 15th November 2012

I could never think of the right word to describe the Afghan countryside at night. There was one word that usually popped into my mind when trying to explain the aura that accompanied the darkness, unnerving. This nine letter word certainly wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t capture the feeling entirely. There was always something about it, the dark, and the silence broken every few minutes by the sound of gunfire in the distance, or the groans of a sleeping soldier as he repositioned his weary body on his rather flimsy camp bed. 

The nights were always quiet, the winds bitter, and the air crisp. The eerie stillness made every much more apparent, during the day the sound of gunfire and explosions were blurred together as people fought, at nightfall  the sounds were less frequent, single gunshots audible, explosions louder and more violent, and the cries of the injured and bereaved made to sound more painful as they echoed through the atmosphere.  The noises of the early hours made you stomach churn, adrenaline rushing through your veins.

The wind blew in strong gusts lifting the dust from the surface of the dirt and bringing it up to whirl around our heads before resettling only to be picked up again moments later. Thirty-two of us sat in a group on the hard ground with helmets in hands waiting for the speaker to buzz to life with the details of a mission. Fifteen of our troops were already out there, in the unknown, dealing with a shooting. The rest laid in deep slumbers a canvas roof over their heads. Laughter came from the third tent as a sergeant chatted to his relatives back home, his wife, and children. 

My body was sore, muscles I didn’t know I had ached with the satisfaction at having been worked and stretched. The previous night’s intense physical training session had definitely taken its toll. My limbs were nowhere near rested, my hand adorned in calluses from the handles of the favoured rowing machine apparatus. 

A large bruise had formed on my left buttock, dark purple in colour, brown around the edges, several more blue toned marks covered my adjoining thigh, a graze situated itself in amongst them. The pain was tolerable, but the rough fabric of my combat army trousers rubbed against the freshly damaged skin abrading away even more. 

Time passed by slowly, the muffled conversations occurring between waiting troops ever present, consciously dying out as the radio finally picked up. The details of an explosion were spoken in a sharp scratchy tone no hesitations made as instructions were read loud and clear. Soldiers jumped into action, rising to their feet, buckling the chin strap of their helmets, and collecting their weapons. The vehicles were boarded, and engines started. The wheels span flicking up sand behind us as we drove out of the metal gateway and towards the horizon.

The drive to a mission always felt long; as if the time it took to get there was time being wasted. We had been informed of several casualties, mostly children.

The wind began to die down as the sandy coloured vehicle; the last of the four to have left the camp was brought to a sudden halt. Five men circled the car, guns held in one hand, fluorescent torches in the other. The bright white lights were shone at the wheels of the vehicle illuminating the space around us. One man yelled in a local language. Another pointed a rifle toward my fellow doctor in combat, Charlotte. I allowed my eye lids to drift shut gently my eyelashes coming to rest on my freckle covered cheeks.

We’d heard about such occurrences, meetings with strangers, from people in the training camps back home, but were always too naïve to believe that it could actually happen, even at the ripe old age of thirty. 

My arse was throbbing, the bruise on my left bum cheek disliking the fact it was being sat on. I was trying to keep a clear mind, ignoring the thoughts of what could happen within the next few minutes. 

I felt a hand come to rest on my shoulder, three fingers and a thumb gripping tightly, a torch resting in the other two. The sound of heavy breathing of which did not belong to me was loud, the air hot against my cheek. His breath smelled strongly of spices, the odour causing my insides to somersault. My eyes remained shut. He muttered something into my ear, a sexist remark, spitting into my face as his tongue came into contact with his top teeth. He had a voice that was gruff, as if he had just awoken from a long deep sleep. The feeling of something wet ran along with cartilage created curve of my outer ear as a hand snaked its way around me until five fingers were situated around my neck. 

Another man approached from behind, taller than the other, his feet making a shuffling sound as he neared. He ran a finger along the defined edges of my jaw before unbuckling the black plastic fastener of my helmet’s chin strap. It fell to the floor with a thud.

It was when his arms were wrapped around my waist that I opened my eyes, allowing them to readjust to the brightness. My entire torso was forced backward as I was thrown to the floor my head slamming against the icy ground. I kicked and struggled as my army vest was removed from my body and my hair released from the bun I had put it in earlier that evening. My scalp burned as my dark hair was pulled and tugged. Screaming, I was hauled into what must’ve been a wagon, my own slender frame crashing into that of somebody else’s much more muscular one.

I lay still, one hand on my forehead, the other resting atop my right breast.  

Groans came from the bodies of the two women lying next to me, conscious, but in pain. Screams came as another was hurtled into the back of the trailer, an elbow digging into the base of my ribcage. 

An engine roared to life, the ground almost creaking as the wagon was pulled away. The sounds of gunshots were clear in the distance as the bodies of my fellow colleagues were rendered unconscious bleeding out into the soil.