The disorder of what at first seemed to be thoughts began ever so slowly to organise themselves, though in truth these were not real thoughts, as real thoughts are questions that the mind asks itself. But the flesh tearing, bone shattering confusion of the situation coupled with the pitch black stain in the corporal’s eyes and the disorientating feeling of his entire body being lifted and then dropped, dully thudding into the ground had rendered these questions of the mind without any answers. As the confusion of incomplete thoughts slowly settled in the mind, his body began to react to the situation that had just occurred. First he felt the dry scorched sand on his face; his cheekbone had made its own little indent and his fingers twitched feeling the softness of the sand between them. There was no telling what kind of chemical imbalance or bodily reaction that had acted so much like the therapeutic properties of the common medicinal painkiller, perhaps it was the confusion of his dehydrated and trauma stricken mind, this we cannot be sure of, but what is certain is that the corporal felt it now. It came like a surging torrent, engulfing his entire body straight from the epicentre of the shoulder, a large hole, a bullet that had entered the top of his right shoulder and had exited along with a large amount of shoulder skin and fragments of bone. The pain spread out like wildfire, searing through every muscle. His toes curled, the hairs on his legs stood on end and his chest convulsed, stomach twisting in knots. He began to dry heave into the sand, the pain clawing at every fibre in his body holding him down. His oesophagus opened again and he coughed. What the fuck is going on? That was the very first complete thought that entered his head as something flicked back into place and he remembered the village. He remembered the barrels in the window. He remembered the screams of his comrades and most of all he remembered the searing pain, the same pain that gripped his entire body at this very moment. The pain was not the worst part though, not even close. As the memories of the patrol came back to him in small increments he began to feel his feelings once again. It was as if someone had seen the body of a soldier lying lost in the sands of the Helmand desert and had decided no, today is not your day, and you do not get to die. You will rise again. And as if the words of the desert had caught him off guard the soldier lifted his head and opened his eyes.
It was dark, the moon was in the sky as one might expect accompanied by a vast crowd of stars and constellations that looked on at the body of the man lying lost in the desert. He began to move, slowly raising his left elbow in order to give him leverage over his own body. Then his right elbow, but he was caught once again by the eruption of pain from his right shoulder. That wasn’t going to work, so he lowered his left elbow and raised the uninjured shoulder up to roll over onto his back and used his powerful abdomen muscles to raise his back from the ground much like a sit up. This motion he must have performed over half a million times, at least, since joining the army. It was perhaps the darkness, or the cold of the night time desert or both that caused the onset of loneliness, there was no one else around and he had no idea of his position. It would be difficult enough for a rescue team to find a group of men out here, never mind a single man but the train of thought was very short lived as he realised the others must be around somewhere. Considering what had happened, there was a high probability that they were injured like him. Perhaps they were carrying much more serious injuries and needed his help. It took a great effort for him to get to his feet, hauling himself against the pain and the weight of gravity, which told him in no uncertain terms that the ground was the place that he should remain. His instincts fought this though, and in a battle of wills he managed to raise himself unsteadily onto his feet. The pain came in pulses strangely similar to the rhythm of his heart. He briefly took stock of the situation. No helmet, that was gone. No rifle, also gone and much of the top of his right hand shoulder was missing. This gruesome sight twisted and contorted his stomach forcing what bodily fluids that remained up through the network of pipes until his mouth was filled with the hot globular reek. His mind hazed for a second, as if it was trying desperately to remove its conscience from the situation it found itself in, he spilled several mouthfuls worth of stomach acid and bile into the arid desert. His chest convulsed again the smell from the wound was horrific and fleshy, what one would imagine the smell of animal remains to be, if they had never experienced such horror, but this time it came to nothing and he began the task of re-organising his thoughts starting with what was his new main priority. He had to bandage up this gaping wound, partly because his dazed mind had come to the conclusion that this injury would be best kept from infection that way and because his eyes, being the eyes of a human, cannot resist the temptation of staring deep into the gaping wound, creating all kinds of imaginative horrors. The eyes themselves have a traumatic experience living with the humans that they are born to behold, witnessing for them the evils of this world; Gruesome murder, mutilation, rape, torture, starvation and disease and many more of the things that the eyes are forced to focus on but are helpless to do anything about.
Another cough, another convulsion left the corporal feeling desperate and weak. With immense difficulty he had removed his standard issue military jacket and his plain white vest top and he was attempting to wrap it around the wound as tight as possible, whilst creating a sturdy knot to hold the make shift dressing in place. With the use of only his left arm, this task was much more difficult than it should be. He tried in vain several times to lift his right arm up to aid his left, but as the bullet had exited the top of his shoulder it had taken with it a large amount of flesh and bone, severing several nerve endings leaving the use of his right arm, not impossible, but excruciatingly painful. First he attempted to feed the makeshift bandage under his shoulder and attempted to tie a knot over the wound, but he had not thought this properly through and he let out a piercing scream that echoed in the darkness around him. The way in which the material had moved, dug the fibrous material sharply into his wound separating two meaty pieces of torn muscle and causing a stab of tremendous pain. Holy shit. The corporal’s words trembled out. No, no that will not work. Stammering and shuddering with the pain the corporal attempted to sling the material over his shoulder and pull it downwards to make a knot under his shoulder this time.
With several cries and yelps, the corporal managed a satisfactory bandage. It made no real difference but it did make him feel slightly more optimistic about his chances of surviving, with such a horrific injury, now that he had done something about it. And with his first objective completed he looked on to the next but nothing could be seen not in this darkness. The moon still watched him from the sky. It was the only definable shape that he could see. Unless you are to imagine the shapes of the stars, not in the traditional five or six point shape, that they are so often portrayed in by children’s books or television shows they were merely dots; some bigger than others. He knew not which way was north or south, neither could he define west from east or east from west in this shade of pitch which surrounded him. He had to find his way somehow and the stars were of no use to him because out here he struggled to identify even the most easily recognisable constellations. Ursa Major, the great bear was lost in the sea of stars. Meaning he had no way of finding the North Star. Look for the brightest in the sky, that was no use to him because they all seemed equally bright. His water deprived mind came up with the idea of finding his lighter, which he had on purposefully placed in one of the many pockets of his standard issue military trousers, fitted with a special utilities belt, for specific items, such as magazines of ammunition for both the rifle and the hand gun and a place for his dagger. All gone nothing left, so he checked the first pocket on the left hand side, nothing. A fever of panic began to rise as he thought about spending the night alone in the desert. No heat, no light and the weight of the fearful dark night sky rubbing up against him. As the cold began to break his resistance his hands shook with the chill and the terror of abandonment.
Tentative infantile steps covered only twenty yards of Afghan desert before the corporal reached a small rock formation which, for no reason that is identifiable to the human conscience, he considered a refuge point. Exhausted and hanging on to the edge of existence, he collapsed into the sand and rested his back against the foot high rock. As the darkness began to close in, he thought of his comrades. They must be out there somewhere. Perhaps they have already regrouped and are trying to figure out how it is they will find their way back to base without any more casualties, perhaps not. The thought lay at the back of his mind but it was so horrific that it could not be touched and deciding that no one would want to hear this thought, especially himself, he left it there, sitting at the back of his mind. He wanted to wrap warning lights around it to keep anyone from trying to access the thought, but if he did that then it would be harder for him to draw his attention away from it. Warning lights, by this time his face had met the sand again but he hadn’t noticed, warning lights were a strange thing to think about. But before he could answer himself, the image of the city grew at the forefront of his inward sight and he could imagine police cars and ambulances. All the different warning lights that his eyes had been trained to associate this kind of pain with but it gave him comfort in a way because he could remember his city, his home and his family. Shit, the family. That was the first time that he had thought about them all day. To be fair to him though, it had been a bad day that had started much too abruptly with the screech of the Sergeant in his ear and had ended much too fast with a bullet tearing through his shoulder. The events in the village began to play out in his mind’s eye but he felt his stomach clench with fear, as if he were scared that it would happen all over again. Then he forced himself to think about his family, his mum and his dad, his girlfriend and his friends all waiting on his safe return. He had promised them too much when he said he would be home in one piece. Clenching his whole body tight to stop the chill from taking him he closed his eyes to let the thoughts linger and the darkness slowly creep over.
