DECODE - Simon Ghost Riley [Editing]

16| Afghanistan

"So, how did you meet John Price?" House asked me, she was slouched in one of the chairs with a bottle of beer in her hands, Soap was sat next to her, his arm wrapped over her shoulders as they sat as though they were directly connected despite having only met each other tonight. "Surely there's a story there,"

I looked down at my knuckles, Ghost's fingers were interlaced with mine whilst we all sat together. Price was sat between me and House, his eyes intently watching everything. I couldn't tell if he wanted me to tell it all, or if he wanted me to be short with the tale, "We met in Afghanistan," I told the group. Simon only knew part of how I met him, and, even then, he didn't know the truth of the story - because the entire file was redacted.

"Tell them, Spence," Price lowly said, his hands folded between his spread legs as he leant on his knees to engage in the conversation, "It's fine," he promised.

My eyes scanned the group of people listening in on the conversation, "Well, it all started when I arrived at Camp Bastion in 2015, when I was eighteen."

Camp Bastion, Afghanistan

2015

Sun broke through the thick, unforgiving layer of cloud which trapped the heat between the scorched sands and the atmosphere. Afghanistan currently felt like an oven, with the temperatures having crept to the low end of 40 degrees Celsius, don't ask me what it is in American measurements, I have no clue when it comes to that shit. It was like the heat, and sand, was everywhere you went. You wanted a shower? Hope you like them scalding hot, soldier. Oh, you need to get some sleep? Enjoy having everything you touch stick to you with a layer of sweat.

Everywhere I looked, there were soldiers dripping with sweat and frustration at not being home. I guarantee that if you asked everyone here what they missed most about the UK, they'd say the rain. Because, not once in the four months I'd been here, had I endured rain. Everything else though, I'd experienced multiple times. And I think I was breaking the record for the most times I'd been admitted to the medical tent for heat-stroke.

To put it lightly, Afghanistan felt too warm to enjoy.

Sure, the scenery was breathtaking, there were sweeping landscapes as far as the eyes could see, and it was filled with breathtaking mountain ranges which dwarfed our military capacity and cut off our radios as soon as we entered the mountain range. There was no way of knowing who was doing what in there, and that was enough to scare me.

This was, I think, my second deployment. My first into an active war zone. Of course, everyone in the British Army gets sent out to Cyprus as their first original deployment, but the longer you spend in and show people you're competent not only as a fighter but as whatever you specialise in, the more likely you are to be sent here.

When I first arrived at the barracks, I was met with a bulletin board which read, "Camp Bastion: Where Dreams Come to Die!", which was a little unsettling, to be honest with you. I didn't really know what to expect, I was expecting to be thrown straight in to a fight, to go out all guns blazing like in movies, but I'd been here four months without seeing any bullets fly past my face for more than thirty seconds. It was a bit boring, but we managed to pass the time.

Someone, probably my Sergeant, a younger male in his 20s, decided to make me the on-call medic for the day, which meant if I wasn't being called out to live incidents, that I got to walk around and do nothing. I even got paid for sleeping! Imagine that. They don't tell you that on the recruitment posters. And they definitely didn't tell me that during my initial training to become a medic, not that I really minded, because it was good work I was doing.

If I wasn't healing soldiers or tending to sun-stroke related injuries, I'd be helping vaccinate local kids and residents against whatever illnesses I could, I'd help the local hospitals with their A&E patients, deliver babies, and even do simple tasks such as checking their stock levels. My Farsi was still shocking, though, so I was nearly always glued to a translator when I was helping in the hospitals, but I enjoyed the company.