The Moving Sands

Eyes open. The light sliced through the dark of the tent, attacked the darkness and it retreated to the corners and behind the objects of the room to form shadows. The shadows dodged the light wherever it fell. It disturbed the bodies where they lay. The source hung in the middle. The bodies on the left hand side of the room, stacked two high, cast their shadows left. There were eight of them to four bunks. On the right hand side the same, except they cast their shadows to the right.

Eyes open. The cry pierced through the room for the second time. Up and ready, outside in five minutes. The bodies tossed around in their bunks, bare feet hit the floor. Groans of disbelief could be heard from all corners of the tent. Their rest was over and now it was time to start moving again. T-shirts, trousers, jackets and heavy duty boots were pulled on one after another. Soldiers emerged from the tent. They formed a disciplined line facing the Staff Sergeant. They looked around tentatively, it was still dark and this made them all feel nervous. The eerie silence of the desert was never comforting to their minds. It had that same feeling of calm that made the storm seem all the more powerful and terrifying. The darkness made it worse in their heads, even though there was no difference. The Sergeant did not care; six minutes had gone by since those familiar orders had been announced. He looked at the line of faces. Determined expressions looked back at him. Six minutes. Their faces dropped, eyes closed. The odd curse was muttered under their collective breath, quietly as to avoid the Sergeant’s range of hearing, but he was not listening. His mind was already racing, plotting and coming up with the words he would use to announce the already expected hour of hell that awaited the sixteen bodies lined up in front of him.

It was the roaring, red face that announced the start and finish of their torture, the punishment that brought any man to the edge of what was physically possible to endure. It was the type of punishments that tore ligaments in two and just as many of the men were on the brink of spilling their guts onto the parched desert sand.  The Sergeant stopped the soldiers, after fifty nine minutes, in order to spend the remaining sixty seconds lecturing his troop of sixteen men on the importance of time keeping, in order to keep plans firmly held together. A plan or an operation is dependent on many factors; the weather conditions, the level of planning and commitment behind it and the diligent keeping of perfect time by every soldier. The Sergeant explained to his soldiers that if any of them were to make the mistake of bad timing in a warzone then they will die out there. The echo of the words pulsated around the camp as the hearts of the soldiers beat against the inside of their chests. The punishment for their bodies was over for now and the sun began to rise, pushing the darkness back, over the distant Hindu Kush Mountains. Their relief was a catalyst for a few childish remarks, a shove here and a push there, of course only when the Sergeant’s back was turned.

When he disappeared out of sight, presumably heading for the commanders tent, the sniggers and shoves broke out into laughter as the radiant light began to warm the cool, desert air. It was that perfect time of the morning before the heat of the sun became violent and irrepressible by midday. The soldiers dispersed for some downtime, they knew from experience that they had exactly an hour before the Sergeant returned. At that point they would start preparations for a routine patrol. Some of the soldiers went off to exercise in the recreational quarters. Many different soldiers from so many different countries but the greatest numbers came from America, Britain, Canada and a selection of European nations. It was the only place in the desert with such a diverse concentration of life. The familiar buzzing of distant helicopters could be heard, incoming and outgoing, ferrying passengers; reporters, camera crews, politicians, reinforcements and the ever more frequent wooden boxes full of bricks. In the camp you did and said whatever you could to stop your mind going to these places, amusing yourself by swapping magazines and old newspapers. Keeping your nerves calm with whatever tobacco you could get your hands on, trying to make this existence even a little like life back home. If a helicopter carrying the precious commodities failed to show or got shot down en route there was no mourning for the life of the dead pilot and crew, not a single thought for their families, just anger. As anger begins to take hold all sense of normality is destroyed, it burns in the wreckage of the helicopter. It had been four days since the announcement of the crash and the soldiers were beginning to get used to reading the same newspapers every day, it was their new sense of normality. The habit of regrouping as a troop outside the briefing tent was also an important one.

The sun hung over the top of the landscape radiating heat down, up and over the dunes. The wind caused by the heated pockets of air, forced the sands to move, shifting left and right, backwards and forwards, throwing the patrol almost three kilometres off course. The soldiers scanned the horizon. Nothing could be seen West or East, a large dune covered the South but North there was something. It stuck out from the endless golden sea. It was inorganic, lines perpendicular to the flat Northern sands, forming the outlines of what was perceived by the Sergeant to be a village. The Sergeant looked at his watch, it read 1500 hours. The sun was torturous; they had been lost in the sand storm for nearly two hours and had no idea of their current position with their radio burried by the storm. After several minutes of deliberation he decided the village was between four and five kilometres due North of their current position. With empty canteens and mouths parched, the early signs of dehydration were beginning to set in. Desperation began to drive them northwards.

The soldiers pushed themselves on; desperate they waded through the sand for hour after hour, the intensity of the reflective light burning on the retina of their eyes. The relentless heat lashing at their backs, pushing them down  and every time a comrade fell they couldn’t help. They had to stay in formation. All that could be done was to shout simple words of encouragement, like a father trying to teach his young son. The sand was loose and thick; it was like walking in deep snow. Each step drained the soldiers of vital energy. One of the soldiers on the far left of their formation was talking to himself, completely delirious. Yet, with the Sergeants constant encouragement the troop had managed to cover what turned out to be the four kilometres to the northern village in two hours. One by one they began to realise why they had stopped. The village was one hundred metres away. The sergeant knew and understood the situation better than anyone. Military intelligence had informed him that there were two villages within a ten kilometre radius of the camp. Both villages were North East of the camp’s position. One village was under influence from American Forces as they had driven the enemy out and built a school for the locals to receive an education. The other village was known to be an enemy stronghold. The sand storm made it impossible, without the help of a radio, to know which village the patrol had stumbled across. So the choice was simple in the eyes of the Sergeant, stay lost in the desert and die of dehydration or take the chance of water and the opportunity of rescue before sundown.

The troop was aware of the situation and their collective silence was enough to tell the Sergeant that they were in agreement with him. On approaching the village the soldiers did not lay down arms, a gesture that is universally understood. The sandy, ramshackle brickwork houses gave no clues. Every soldier had a deep feeling, right at the pit of the stomach, any sudden movement would make them vomit uncontrollably. There was no sign of a school, all the men had full, tangled beards and there were neither women nor children visible. There were dark skinned men seemingly unarmed shouting, hollering at the soldiers. The Sergeant began speaking, shouting back trying to calm the men down but it happened faster than the flick of a safety switch. Two glimmering barrels appeared in the dark, second floor windows of the large, central building. Shots bounced repeatedly off the Kevlar body protection of the soldiers before the projectiles found the gaps. Screams could be heard from inside the houses as the rain of ammunition snapped and cracked and echoed out over the desert. The guts of the soldiers spilled out onto the parched sand as the desert finally took what it wanted. In the middle of the village lay the bloodstained bodies of seventeen soldiers. As the sun began to fall and the light started to fade out across the vast desert, the bodies cast their darkened shadows.