Moments

2016 Service

"Must you really go?"

"Yes, Niall, they called me, I have to go. I signed up myself. It's just training and then gaining experience. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"Well if you really must go, take this with you." He handed me a ring from his trouser pocket.

"What's this?"

"It's a luck ring. To keep you safe. Luck of the Irish."

"I hope you don't mean your Irish knee because I don't want to be shot 14 times and still live to tell the tales. We can't always be together, I know, but you'll manage. Like you do every time your tour starts up."

"If only it was that simple…"

"I trust you, you trust me, we keep in contact. It's that ruddy simple."

"It's just-"

"I'm not running into a killing field. I don't even get a gun supplied. I get extra fitness training because everything else is fine… dammit. And I get classes on how to deal with basic first aid and how to deal with the initial response to natural disaster."

"Sounds important."

"It is. Now, I've got to live with this bunch for the training and next half year of deployment, I don't need them to start laughing at me the minute we leave."

"Why would they?"

"It's not Middle East front line stuff, but it's still risky. I get called up to natural disaster, biological weapon aftermaths, that sort of thing. And they're mostly single, as you can see. Lord, I hope they're alright."

"So I could be called out to scrape your blasted remains off the ground and that's what you hope for?"

"Well I won't actually get to see you be absolutely miserable by the time you're called to take a look at me shot through the head or something, not scrape me off the ground, thank you very much, so that's the next on my list."

"What the hell are you doing though?"

"I got the options of Response Unit, on the Armoured Division or joining Infantry, but infantry is a bit too exposed and with my luck, I'll be shot through the leg or arm and everything's gonna be mashed up in there. So I'm Response Unit on the ground."

"Let's see that patch… 23rd Company."

"If the 3rd Regiment 23rd Company went in to help the half-bombed out kids and we got ambushed, just remember that I'm toast."

"How… how can you be so… light about it?"

"I've accepted death as a possibility as part of the job. But we never know when we'll have the crap bombed out of us. I don't want to have the crap bombed out of our regiment, but… if not…" I say looking at my boots now, "if I don't make it back in one piece… Louis' got it. I'll write to you. Maybe not through training, but certainly when I'm out there on peacekeeping. It's peacekeeping. It's a walk through the park compared to what started up in Syria 3 years ago."

"It's everything you're good at. I'm gonna be waiting here and you're gonna come home. You have to." I hefted my rucksack that was Niall's present for me after a strap on the one I had been using through my time with One Direction and into university had broken.

I listen in to the rowdy trainees I would have to live with as we prepare to fly out to Malaysia. Loud conversations all around me. It's hard not to listen in.  His voice echoed in my head. So now I guess I know what it's like to have someone you love go out to serve. I found it really hard to respond. My parents had always been against me even thinking about the armed forces, even TA, so this is almost living out my dream in a way. Not so much against my brothers joining, but they did warn them that the Army was full of rough people and we wouldn't stand a chance in there, on top of the fact we're foreign.