CHAPTER 5
We went home, and I wasn’t the only one crying in his sleep.

I look back now, and I can see how many men were clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, bur even as recently as the Eighties it was still a matter of being a big man, having the balls to ride it out. Some day I must work out what the suicide rate was for veterans of our nasty little war.

It left me with a real downer on politics. I had no grouse with why we had done it, the more I found out about the Argentine junta and their habits, the “dirty war” on their own people and the “Disappeared”, the more I knew we had done the right and necessary thing. God knows how I would have felt without that knowledge.

No, what gnawed at my soul was the fact that it had only been “necessary” because of the politicians, who all seemed to be running some odd fantasy game where they wanted to make the real world conform to their own odd perception of it.

Flash, flash, flash of weapons at night, like Hell’s own disco. Empty eyes, filled with rain.

It was a long voyage, and we used it to try and disengage from that automatic killing mindset. You have to. You come off something like Goose Green, or Tumbledown, and you go to a pub and somebody pisses you off, it really isn’t a great idea to just react. It’s one of the reasons we like our own pubs, without any hatters there, or civvies if we can help it. The paras even try and keep us out, but then our pubs are usually a couple of hundred miles apart. A bit like the old joke about how penguins avoid being eaten by polar bears.

I spent a lot of time at the rail, just staring. Stewie would usually bring me out a cuppa, or a can of crap beer, and we would stare out over an ocean empty but for our own ships, no more CAP, no strike aircraft boring in to try and blow us out of existence. He came straight to the point after three days or so.

“Are you queer, Mike? No, wait, it’s not a problem, and I haven’t talked to anyone else”

“Why do you ask, Stew?”

“I catch you looking at me every so often, when you think I’m not watching. You look all soppy when you do that”

“Do you want the truth, mate?”

He looked at me hard, silent for a minute.

“Yeah, if you know what it is”

“That’s just it, mate, I don’t know what it is. I don’t fancy men, certainly not to shag. Emma's exactly my type there, all legs and arse, and I could tell you things about her, but men do absolutely nothing for me. The idea of a cock just puts me right off. Fannies make me very happy”

And there was the truth, but not quite as Stewie would hear it. When I spoke of hating cocks and liking fannies, it was all rather more personal than I was really letting on. I meant my own, literally. Little Voice was becoming clearer day by day, and I was realising at last who the inner girl was, and she was as gay as a pack of fairy cakes. There was no way I could let that one out, though.

“Stewie, I can only say this once, so keep your trap shut till I finish. I love you. I don’t mean I fancy you, or want a shag, or want to stop shagging girls, but I care deeply for you. I spent the whole of our time down there scared shitless you would come back in a bag, and I would have died to prevent that. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s not like a brother, and it’s not like a lover, it’s just I am happier by your side than anywhere else.

“No, I’m not queer, I really can’t describe what I am, but that ugly little maggot you keep in your shreddies is safe from me. “

I paused, drew a deep breath.

“And now I will fully understand it if you tell me to fuck off.”

“Do not be so fucking stupid”

His hug nearly broke my ribs.

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We sailed into the Solent surrounded by ships and boats of all sizes, horns blowing, flags waving. They meant well, but they weren’t there. Again, in later years, after I had discovered PTSD through my reading and my shrink, I came across “survivor guilt”, such an apt term. You wonder what you did to stay alive that someone else didn’t and the conclusion is that you must have held back somehow, not been as committed or brave as the dead were; that they deserved to have lived because they gave the sacrifice, and you must somehow not have been worth it.

I think every Falklands veteran must feel that way. I can’t speak for earlier wars, but I don’t see why they should be any different. Witnessing violent death is not something modern humans are very good at unless they are mentally ill in some way. I know I have referred to myself as insane, but not like that. Not like that.

I took a train up to Waterloo, then a tube to King’s Cross for the Intercity to Newcastle. Dad and Mam were waiting for me at Central Station and we had a very emotional reunion, even Dad’s eyes leaking, and before we went anywhere we walked round to the Station Hotel and I had my first pint of Scotch in ages. Dark, rich beer, so different to the Devon brews and far superior to what the Canberra had offered us.

Stewie had hugged me again as he went off home to the little place in Banbury his parents had, and we knew without speaking that we had a bond that was just that, beyond words. We had four weeks leave before heading back to Devon, and it took three of those weeks before I could feel at least slightly relaxed. I had to be careful down the pub, as described earlier. People I hardly knew would offer me drinks, pat me on the back, and I had to keep the instincts chained down. A loud noise would have me on my feet; my sleep was filled with those flashes, those empty eyes.

I got out as often as I could, out onto the hills with my rock boots soloing the sandstone outcrops as the Summer waned, curlews wailing over the moorland, and as soon as my leave was up I was back at the base. When I knocked at Emma’s door, some hairy answered it, and Emma purred “I needs my cock, my lover, and you was away so long”

Ah well.

I signed up for another few years. This was my family now, Mam and Dad and my brother not withstanding, but more importantly, these were the only people who understood, who could ever understand.

And Stewie was here.

Hatter: or Harry the Hat. or craphat. Any other beret colour than bottle green (Marine) or maroon (Para), or any other beret colour than the one you are wearing. Lesser form of life.