Читать книгу Dog Soldiers: Love, loyalty and sacrifice on the front line - Isabel George, Isabel George - Страница 7

Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 1.50am, Friday 25 July 2008

Lyn Rowe stirred to the glare of headlights at the bedroom window. Transfixed by the light and the silence she flinched at the ‘clunk’ of the car door and the tip-tap of footsteps on the drive, but in that moment Lyn already knew this wasn’t the neighbours returning late or a stranger who had taken a wrong turning.

Lyn was halfway down the stairs when she heard the doorbell. Caught in a frightening wave of certainty she had no doubt that the dark-suited figure standing at her front door was the messenger she prayed would never visit her family.

‘Mrs Rowe? Can I come in please?’

The man held his ID card against the window by the door.

‘No, you can’t come in!’ Lyn found her voice as she felt her husband’s arm around her. ‘I can’t let you in because I know what you’re going to tell me.’

K, the family’s dog, was barking like mad as the caller tried again: ‘I need to speak to you, Mrs Rowe.’

All five foot two inches of Lyn Rowe was now barring the door. ‘Now why would I let you into my house when I know what you are going to say to us? No, go away!’

Ken Rowe stepped forward, standing tall between his wife and the door.

‘Mr Rowe,’ the messenger persisted, ‘can you please ask your wife to open the door?’

LYN

We must have stood in the hall a good few minutes looking through the glass porch at the man waiting. I knew that if I let him into our home my world would change and I was prepared to stand there forever if it meant never having to hear the words he had come to say.

All the time we stood there I felt as if my feet had been bolted to the floor, but the moment Ken pulled me closer I knew the wait was over. He loosened his grip on my arm and leant out to open the door.

‘Mr and Mrs Rowe, I’m sorry for the early hour but I need to speak with you. Can I come in?’

I didn’t have a chance to say no again as the man took advantage of the open door, as I knew he would. I couldn’t move. I was transfixed by his boots as he wiped them on the mat and Ken showed him into the lounge.

I only remember flashes of what happened next but I know he asked us to sit down, but I took the news standing up.

‘We’ve received news that concerns your son, Kenneth. He was on duty in Helmand Province with B Company 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 Para) when they came under heavy attack from a group of insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Kenneth took a direct hit and his dog, Sasha, too. They were killed instantly. They fell together, Mrs Rowe. Kenneth didn’t die alone.’

A silence overpowered the room. The dog stopped barking.

There’s still a sense of the surreal about that morning. It’s not because of what was said to me, because I knew what that would be from the first flash of the car headlights, but maybe it’s more to do with the short time it took for it to be explained. In less than an hour I had lost my son. He was 24 years old.

Kenneth (I always call him Kenneth as his father is Ken) was a soldier who loved dogs and died doing the job he loved. I knew that if there was any way by which he would have wanted to leave us forever it would have been doing his duty as a Military Working Dog handler. It was the job he wanted to do and the one he signed up for. And to have his search dog, Sasha, at his side at the end, well, maybe he would have been characteristically … proud. Proud to have been doing his duty to the last second of his life.

Of course, none of that came into my head that July morning in 2008. I’ve since been told that what happened next was done in shock and denial, and maybe that’s right. One thing I’m sure of is that Kenneth would have been surprised if I had behaved in any other way.

‘So how long do I have to tell the family?’ I remember asking the man from the MoD. ‘We have a large family and I want them to hear this news from me, not the BBC. How long?’

He told me we had until late morning, latest, as Kenneth’s death would be announced on the BBC lunchtime news. And he needed a photograph of my son, if that was all right.

It was still only 3am but by then time was irrelevant. I am one of six children and Ken had his mother and two sisters to reach, so with nephews, nieces and cousins on top of that it was pretty much a race against time. He kindly asked if there was anything he could do to help. I hope he saw that I was already making a list in my head of people I needed to speak to, and as soon as he left I started transferring my thoughts to paper.

I decided it was too early to start calling people, even family – after all, it was the kind of news that could wait until everyone else’s day had begun. Nothing was going to change the news or make it any better, but at least I could make a list of who needed to know. I decided that 6am would be a good time to start making the rounds. But what about work?

As Practice Manager for a large legal firm in Newcastle I always had plenty on my plate. All my friends and colleagues know I’m a workaholic, but at that particular time I was right in the middle of an audit that would achieve a European standard for all the offices in the firm. The audit was nearly over and there was no way I was going to walk out and let everyone down. I told myself that I was going to complete it and cope.

I filled two pages of A4 notepaper with instructions for the team. Every detail of all they had to do to complete the audit and achieve the accreditation was there. It was still only 5.30am but I decided that it was best to deliver the notes and the files I had with me to the office so they would be there when it opened. Ken drove while I thought back over what I’d written, but when we arrived I realised that I couldn’t get into the main building without setting off the full alarm system. Thankfully I had access to the garage so we stacked the boxes of files in there and put the notes on top. I knew I could explain anything else when I phoned my boss later. That was work done. Sorted.

Now, my family.

It was still only 6.10am. Then it hit me, my beautiful girls. I had to tell them they had lost their brother. Dear God – was this some kind of nightmare?

When we arrived at Jennifer’s house I sat in the car for a minute or so to get myself together before Ken took my hand to help me out of the car. I will never forget Jeni’s face when she opened the door; she knew something was very wrong and I’m not sure that it really registered when I finally uttered the words: ‘Kenneth’s been killed …’

She took the news reasonably well. Probably in shock, I realise that now. We hugged like we would never let each other go. Ken held us both. Our rock. Our protector. But even this was beyond him.

We couldn’t bear to leave Jeni behind so she came with us to Stephanie’s home, just a short distance away. It’s still a comfort to know they live so close to each other and that morning I was especially relieved as Steph took it very badly. Kenneth was her big brother and watched over her. Yes, he could be more than over-protective, but it was all part of his love for his little sister. Now he was gone.

I hated seeing my girls in tears. I would have given anything to just get them together and hide away from the world, but the burden of having to reach the rest of the family within the next four hours was weighing heavy on me now.

I’m the second child in a family of six and I’m half Chinese. My father was in the Royal Signals and met my mother when he was stationed in Hong Kong. They met, fell in love, and when my father’s tour of duty ended he brought his Chinese bride back to Newcastle. I’m sure it was quite a culture shock for her – 1950s Newcastle was dark and industrial and a far cry from the vibe and colour of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, despite the influences around her she brought up her family in line with her strong Chinese ethos. The family bond was close and unbreakable and family always came first.

In Chinese families you go by your number in the family: number 1 child, number 2 child, etc, and even then the boys take the lead followed by the girls. So, it was natural to me to put the number system into play when deciding who to inform first. My elder sister, Jann, took the news well, although she was clearly upset. My sister Lesley was inconsolable and crumpled on receiving the news. I said to her: ‘Please don’t do this to me!’ I was finding it hard to keep myself together and strong enough to get around everyone so all we could do was bundle her into the car and take her with us.

The impact on my brothers, Martin and Gary, was excruciating to watch. They loved Kenneth like a son and now they had the pain of telling their own children that he had been killed.

There was only my ‘baby sis’ Michelle left to tell then, and I was dreading it. I was so glad that Lesley was with us and could help us to comfort her because as we stood together the grief was palpable. But I could not let it take me yet. My job wasn’t finished.

Ken’s mother was on holiday so his two sisters had the dreadful job of telling her when she returned. We did not want her holiday spoilt as she could not change anything – no one could.

At 9am on the dot I called my boss at work. ‘Hi Stephen, it’s Lyn. I’ve got some bad news. Kenneth has died. He’s been killed in Afghanistan.’ There was silence on the end of the phone and then he said: ‘Oh my God. What are you doing ringing me?’

I remember telling him to please be quiet and I needed to talk to him about the audit. I also recall his reply: ‘Forget the audit! What about you? I’m happy to cancel the audit. Just tell me what we can do to help you?’ There was only one answer to that – carry on with the audit. I hadn’t done all that work to have them pull out now, especially as I had spent over an hour sorting the files and the notes. It was still my responsibility and I was not going to be the excuse that let the whole team down. I made Stephen promise that it would go ahead.

Then everything went blank.

From the moment the messenger from the MoD left our home that morning I think the bulk of my sadness found a place to hide inside me. I couldn’t give in to it until all the practical things had been ticked off the list.

I’m sure I listened to all the man had to say (though, for the life of me, I can’t remember much at all). I’m sure I probably thanked him for coming and for his patience and for his offer of help and his advice. In the silent moments after Ken showed the man out I no doubt thought what a horrid job that must be to have to visit parents in the dead of night and give them the worst news they could ever imagine. I wondered how he must feel now, driving back to wherever. I’m sure he breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he sat back in the car and told himself that he never wanted to do that again – knowing that he would have to, sooner or later.

I didn’t blame him – it wasn’t his fault – but he had opened a portal direct to hell, and for me there was no way out.

I cried, of course I cried, but I didn’t fall apart – not then.

The funny thing was, I had felt odd all that previous day.

I had been on day three of the four-day audit and I was driving back from the Carlisle office when I heard a loud ‘boom’. I was on the A69 at about 5.30pm so I wondered if I had kicked something up off the road that had hit the car, or perhaps that someone behind me had experienced a tyre blow-out or a mechanical problem. I couldn’t see anything and my car was still driving OK, so I carried on. I just wanted to get home.

It had been a long day and I blamed that for the ‘low’ feeling and whatever it was that was making me feel ‘not right’. The journey had not been too painful but I was glad to swing the car onto the drive and turn off the ignition. Home.

Ken was already there, which meant the evening meal would be on the go and a pot of tea at the ready. That realisation would usually be enough to ease my stress level and calm me down but that odd feeling was still in the pit of my stomach and I didn’t like it at all.

As I kicked off my shoes in the hall I noticed something that made me feel worse: the white orchid that Kenneth had given me for Mother’s Day had dropped a bloom. Not only that but the leaves were turning brown and some had already fallen. I accept that house plants die and orchids are particularly fragile – I should know as I love them and had kept them for years – but the thing about this particular orchid was that it had flowered so well and for so long. Kenneth had had to give it to me well in advance of Mother’s Day as he knew he would be in Afghanistan in March. Everyone who’d seen it had remarked on its beauty and staying power.

I stood looking at it for a few minutes and felt quite sick. I took it as a sign of change and from that moment I felt restless.

I was tired that night but I couldn’t sleep. I should have been ready for bed and some good refreshing sleep but all I could manage was lots of tossing and turning. Even when I dozed off I was awake in minutes, with my head spinning.

It was then that I saw the headlights at the bedroom window.

‘This is the lunchtime news from the BBC:

‘The Army dog handler killed in Afghanistan on Thursday has been named by the Ministry of Defence. Lance Corporal Kenneth Michael Rowe, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, who was 24, and from Newcastle, had been due to leave the front line the day before he died. He and his explosives search dog, Sasha, died after coming under Taliban fire during a routine patrol in Helmand. Lance Corporal Rowe had asked not to leave on Wednesday as he worried about his base not having enough search cover. The death brings the total number of British service personnel who have died in Afghanistan to 112.

‘Lance Corporal Rowe’s commanding officer, Major Stuart McDonald, said, “This unselfish action epitomises his professionalism and dedication to his job. I feel lucky to have known him and gutted to have to say goodbye.”

‘Kenneth Rowe and his dog Sasha were the first Royal Army Veterinary Corps dog and handler to be killed in action since The Troubles in Northern Ireland.’

So it was real.

I remember, we were standing in the kitchen with my brother, Gary, when I heard Kenneth’s name on the television. There on the screen was the photograph of my son in his dress uniform. The photograph that, until a few hours before, had been hanging, in its frame, on the stairs. My handsome son. My beautiful boy.

That was the moment when I let go.

If someone asked me to tell them exactly what happened next I would have only one answer – I’ve no idea.

I had motored through the previous ten hours on auto-pilot, with a huge heap of denial thrown in, but when reality was eventually allowed in it took over. My sister Lesley came over and decided I needed tranquillisers to calm me down, but I didn’t want to leave the house and the medication couldn’t be prescribed over the telephone so, bizarrely, I found myself sitting in the doctor’s waiting room in floods of tears. There I was, patiently waiting for my appointment and wondering what on earth I was doing there!

I’m sure the pills worked, taking the edge off whatever I was feeling, but I don’t think anything could have taken away the anger that rose inside me when the press started knocking on the door. Waves of well-meaning neighbours at the door was one thing, but having the media parked outside on the lawn was something else. We are very close and keep everything within our family unit – we solve our own problems together – but suddenly the BBC News had exposed our loss, our soft underbelly, and we felt vulnerable. Ken and my brothers dealt with the press on the doorstep. A simple ‘leave us alone’ seemed to work effectively, at least on the decent ones.

Me? I just wanted it all to go away.

The awful thing is, just hours before our nightmare began, Kenneth was supposed to be on his way home to us.

The day I drove to Carlisle for the audit Kenneth emailed me at 6am: ‘Hi, Mam. Who will be picking me up and what time?’ I remember saying: ‘Don’t worry about that, son, you just get yourself home. It’ll be me or your dad. I’m off to work now so I’ll ask your dad to call you back later to let you know who will be there for you.’

That was it. I had visions of Kenneth finishing his duties at Bastion then packing and getting ready to catch the next Helmand Taxi (as they called the Chinook) out to start his journey to RAF Brize Norton where the military aircraft landed and … home. Friday was to be the last day of my audit, which was great because, once I had thought about the timings, I knew that I would be able to be with Ken when he drove down to Brize to pick up Kenneth. I wanted to see our son so much.

This was July and I hadn’t seen him since the Deployment Party in February. Kenneth had enjoyed being with his mates and his family and it was great to meet the people he would be spending the next few months with in Afghanistan. They would be his ‘family’ until he came home again and they had seemed a great bunch of lads.

I will never forget what Kenneth was wearing that night – a salmon-pink T-shirt. It wasn’t my cup of tea and he probably knew that. It was funny to me because Kenneth was always so smart; he thought about everything he wore and his thick dark brown hair was always gelled into place. He had told me that a lot of his Army friends had thought he had Mediterranean blood but he always said he was proud to tell them that his dark hair and olive complexion were thanks to his half-Hong Kong Chinese mother. I liked that.

The morning after the party there he was at breakfast – in the same T-shirt. I had to ask him if he had anything else to wear, which he knew I would at some point. But of course he was travelling light and was meeting friends later so I understood when he said, ‘Sorry, Mam, this is all I’ve got, but you won’t forget it, will you?’ It’s true, that shirt made a lasting impression on me. I sometimes forgot that he was 24 years old, but then he was always ready to remind me that he was no longer my little boy.

It was one of those mornings when we knew we would have to say goodbye to Kenneth later and I was keen to have some breakfast with him before he announced that he needed to be somewhere else to meet his friends. ‘What do you want for breakfast, son?’ his dad asked, as he was probably ready for something himself. The expected answer came back: McDonald’s.

It wouldn’t have been everyone’s choice but it was always going to be Kenneth’s, especially as he knew he wouldn’t be tasting anything like that for a few months. At breakfast I discovered that it’s difficult to eat when your throat is so tight you can hardly breathe, and then all too soon the moment had come – breakfast was over and the goodbyes had to begin.

Kenneth hugged all the family, then his dad and then me.

‘I love you, son,’ I said. He hugged me back. ‘I’ll write as often as I can and send parcels. Let us know if you need anything,’ I continued. He started to cry. ‘Now stop it or you’ll start me off,’ I scolded him. His hug tightened.

‘I just want you to know that I love you, Mam.’

I’m not sure if that last hug was tighter than normal or that’s a trick my mind has played on my memory of that morning since then, but if I think about that moment I can still feel Kenneth’s arms around me.

‘Now just don’t be stupid and volunteer for anything’ I said. ‘Promise me you won’t volunteer and you won’t put yourself up front. Promise me, Kenneth.’

I remember him walking away saying: ‘Right, Mam. OK, Mam …’ But as I watched him from behind I saw him drying tears, first with one hand then the next. My beautiful brown-eyed boy in his salmon-pink T-shirt.

It’s my lasting memory of him.

Of course, after that our contact was down to the usual and very welcome flurry of ‘blueys’. Those pale-blue airmail paper letters are still a lifeline in Forces’ families. I’m sure none of us knows what we would do without them. The emails and the phone calls are great – as long as they can be sent and received. As Kenneth said when he was in Afghan, ‘Emails … can’t get them in the desert. Still waiting on that terminal you plug into the sand!’

Letters were always precious and there was a massive comfort in seeing a bluey drop onto the mat. Kenneth’s spelling was atrocious and he knew it. But it didn’t matter one bit because, to me, receiving a bluey meant he was alive, able to write a letter and thinking of home. Parcels and letters to Kenneth often arrived around five days after sending and some wandered around following ‘the dog handler’ as he moved between camps, including the main base, Camp Bastion, and the various Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). But there was never any doubt that the post would be delivered to him somewhere and sometime.

Every letter was a window into our son’s world in Afghanistan and every anecdote came with a handful of sand.

I remember in one of his letters he told his dad about how he had to ‘dig in’ to protect himself and the bomb dog he was working with then, Diesel, against yet another biting sandstorm. He had told us before how, after the blistering heat of the day, the storms blew in fiercely during the night ‘… like a blanket of sand hitting you for about six hours non-stop. We woke up looking like something from f…ing Kentucky Fried Chicken!’

Kenneth was deployed on Operation Herrick 8 in March 2008 and whenever I read and re-read the letters, just to have him with me for a second, I realised that while I was here missing him he was there but always reaching out to home. If there was one thing Kenneth always made sure of, wherever he was, it was that we had his address. There were few letters that didn’t contain a shopping list but I soon realised that a shopping list was a way of guaranteeing that there would be a parcel to look forward to. Sweets, biscuits, baby wipes, boxers and … socks. I have no idea how many pairs of socks I sent to Afghanistan but then I had no real idea how important something as simple as a pair of socks could be out there.

‘Socks. Oh my God, socks. They are a f…ing life-saver, Mam. Pardon the language, like, but my feet might get some feeling in them now. Imagine 35–40 degree heat walking around the pissing desert for six hours at a time.

‘Tell Dad I got to throw my first live grenade the other day. Mint! Absolutely mint! I’ll tell you about it when I’m home. Ha! Ha! Ain’t had chance to let my rifle do any work yet but hey there’s 5½ months to go.’

Looking back, knowing what I know now, I still understand my son’s excitement because this was what he wanted to do. This is what he had trained so hard for, and there he was, in his words, ‘living the dream’. And of course the dream job came with a dog.

It must have been in his second bluey home that Kenneth told us that he had been taken off protection work and had, at last, been assigned an arms and explosives search (AES) dog called Diesel.

‘I haven’t got a complaint about him at all apart from he loves other dogs too much. I’ll have to watch that when we’re working coz the local dogs will kill him if he gets too close. What else can I tell you except, don’t worry … If anything was to happen to me you would be notified quickly enough. They would either ring your mobile or home. Not going to happen.’

Every letter after that was signed off not just by Kenneth but with love from Diesel, too – never forgetting the mini paw print. My son was happy and so was I because now, wherever he was, he would not be alone.

Through March and into April Kenneth was in Afghanistan but his letters betrayed that his mind was still at home. He had to post his mobile phone back to me and of course there was a bill to pay. I could tell that bit of admin was worrying him, and so for the same reason he authorised me to deal with all his post that came to him at our home. I didn’t mind, after all, as there was little he could do about all that from where he was. Trying to deal with a call centre from the comfort of your own home is frustrating enough but it’s near impossible when you have to book telephone and internet time at Camp Bastion on equipment that’s shared with several hundred other people. Besides, I liked to feel needed. That was normal, as a mum.

I was already missing Kenneth’s constant cries of, ‘Mam, could you just … Mam, while you’re in town could you pick me up some …’ There was always something he wanted me to get for him, even when he was home.

I’m not just saying this because he was my son, but he was a good-looking boy and he liked to look smart even when he was in casual clothes, which included his beloved Newcastle United football shirt. Kenneth liked specific toiletries so his shopping list would be pretty detailed and he wouldn’t be seen out of the house without hair gel. His sisters were always complaining that he spent too long in the bathroom and it was a family joke that if you didn’t make it into the shower before Kenneth you would be waiting forever!

It was no surprise to any of us that his blueys almost always contained some kind of shopping list. It made me smile thinking of him sitting on his camp cot in the desert, paper resting on his knees – just as he did as a boy doing his homework – pen poised ready to scribble down all the things he had been saving in his head.

April 2008, his first bluey after just being posted to Camp Roberts at Kandahar Airfield said:

‘Hi Parents … How are we today? I’ve been good since the last time we spoke and fully integrated with my battle group. That sounds quite scary really, “battle group”. Ha, ha. Me going into battle is probably never going to happen and I’ll never get a chance to get some rounds off as the Platoon I’m with will do all that for me. It would be an experience, I reckon, and nice to see how I would cope with it after all the training. Be good to kick in and really enjoy it. Diesel is doing well. He’s chasing flies at the moment in the living room at the kennels I’m staying at … My new address means you won’t have to send stuff through Bastion anymore so you can get things to me a lot easier.

‘I have a list of things needed or liked. Not necessarily to be sent all at once … and I’ve asked Jeni to send some stuff so if you can tie in with her plz … at least I will have them for when I get back from the job I’m going on. So, watch, trainer socks, baby wipes, photos of the family, Bonjela, something to cut my nails with other than my bayonet, under crackers (pants) and dog treats and toys for Diesel – oh, and a digital camera (there was one in Argos quite cheap). There are cameras out here but they are six megapixel shite … and the phone I sent back to you is bloody five million pixels. I wanted a better one to keep pictures of my experiences here. I should have thought about it long before this, like.’

While his dad got questions about the car and if it had been fixed yet, and the state of Newcastle United, Kenneth made sure his girls did his shopping! He knew we would run around and made sure there was always one parcel on its way and another being made up. We soon got used to the delay in his requests coming in, the parcel leaving home and arriving with him. Numbering the parcels helped, too, so he knew what to expect in each and which email or letter it corresponded with. It was a bit of a science, really, and certainly there was nothing random about it.

Of course, there was the odd challenge, like the time he asked for Drumstick lollies in a bluey on 10 April:

‘Thanks again for the watch and the socks. Guys are already sick of the T-shirt and me getting news of Newcastle victories. It’s great! Oh, Mam, can you find me some Drumstick lollies? I had a craving for them along with some malted milk biscuits. Ahhh, I know it’s hard maybe to do but a “brew” kit – some real teabags. Sugar I’ll be able to steal and we’ve got dried milk but a packet of real teabags plz. I miss a good brew. Oh well, speak again soon. All my love as always, Ken xxx and Diesel xxx’

Sometimes, in those early days of Kenneth being in Afghanistan I forgot that I was sending this stuff into temperatures of 30 to 40 degrees plus. I was over the moon to find Drumstick lollies aplenty in our local shop. As I grabbed a handful out of the box on the counter I imagined the broad grin that would appear on my son’s face when he opened the envelope and there they would be, along with his requested biscuits, sports mags and back copies of the Newcastle Chronicle, plus the little surprises that Jeni and Steph had prepped for him. Envelope sealed and addressed to Lance Corporal Kenneth Rowe, Dog Handler, Op Herrick 8, I felt pure joy as the woman at the post office took it from me. To me, it was already on its way.

Then came the ‘thank you’ bluey:

‘Hi Mam, Received your parcel today which was a nice touch – everything was crushed and melted, like. The Drumstick lollies were open and had leaked onto the newspapers with the melted chocolate off the biscuits! … Never mind … I’ve been putting some weight back on but just on my stomach … not good … I will have to go running when I get home. You get any passes for the gym?’

I tried a second time with the lollies and all landed successfully – wrapped and intact. Kenneth must have decided to share them out or the opening of his parcel had attracted a crowd because he wrote to say: ‘… can’t believe how much a small thing like a Drumstick lolly can put such big smiles on the faces of four grown men!’ I like to think of him sitting eating the lollies – bought in a little shop in Newcastle – with his mates in the dust of Afghanistan.

He always said the parcels were a massive boost to morale and there was always huge excitement when the post arrived – it didn’t matter whose post. The contents of letters and parcels were always likely to be a source of comfort, amusement, relief, joy and sometimes ridicule from their mates. Kenneth’s parcels always had to have that extra something – for the dog. Non-melting, of course.

After that I was much more careful about wrapping each item before adding them to his parcels. Sending things when he was based in Northern Ireland had been much easier – searing heat was never likely to be a problem there, although drowning would have been no surprise as every letter and phone call featured a rain report. From March to April 2008, almost every letter from Kenneth featured the weather, but it was all about heat and dust, rain and sand.

At first the sunshine was a novelty and there were plenty of ‘no time to sunbathe’ jokes and tales of sunscreen shortages. Kenneth liked the sun and he had inherited my olive skin but the Afghan heat was too intense even for him. Soon it began to affect everything from his sleep to his general morale. By the end of April he was wishing for snow and when the rain came he wanted it to go away. Kenneth was never shy of a good moan, and I’m sure his Army mates were used to it, too, but once he had said his piece he admitted he felt better: ‘rant over’.

Kenneth worried about Diesel, too. He always told us how well his dog was working, but shelter and rest were important and Kenneth’s Bergen was always packed with food, treats and a blanket for Diesel. Whatever the weather had to offer, Diesel would be OK. If Kenneth had to dig in for shelter he dug a man-and-Labrador-sized hole. If there were sandbags to protect the hole from the rain Kenneth explained how he had extended the sandbag wall to protect his dog, too. That dog was his mate as much as any other soldier there.

Plans for his deployment out of Kandahar Airfield (KAF) in mid-April had been held back so the days waiting meant more time to write letters home. I loved getting the extra letters but I didn’t like hearing Kenneth’s frustration. ‘That work I mentioned has been postponed for now so I’m still in KAF living the dream! … How’s life back in Newcastle?’ If the letters weren’t very short, they were very long and full of detailed questions about his dog at home, ‘K’, and the welfare of Trevor his tortoise and how his dad was getting on with setting up the vivarium. I couldn’t help smiling as I read his ramblings. Maybe there was a little bit of guilt in there for leaving us with his pets to care for (but we had always done that) or it was all about stringing out that connection – for as long as he could stay awake to write it all down. It was funny and lovely and I just wanted to reach out and give him a massive hug.

Getting a letter like that said one thing to me: he needed cheering up. He was going to miss his sister Stephanie’s 21st birthday meal so I decided we would take a bluey and a pen with us and pass it around the table so every member of the family could add a message to Kenneth – as if he had been there with us. He loved it! In the best way we could we managed to get Kenneth at that table, and just imagining the food was enough for him. It was as if living on ration packs had caused him to hallucinate about his grandma’s Chinese chicken curry, mince and dumplings and his favourite roast dinners. If I could have sent him a doggy bag I would have done it that night. Instead I wrote: ‘We missed you, son,’ knowing that he was missing us too.

Kenneth had just become a father too, to baby Hannah. He was so happy about the baby and desperate to see the little one, who was born just after he went on tour. It wasn’t an easy situation with Kenneth so far away and I know Hannah was on his mind all the time. From the moment she was born she was in his letters. He was a father and he wanted to get home to see her, but he was also a dedicated dog soldier with a job to do.

For him, that April seemed to involve a lot of waiting and then waiting some more – for the ‘push’, as he described it. He told us the little he could about the scheduled briefings and particularly the training sessions which he loved and kept the dogs at the top of their game. Kenneth was pleased with Diesel and could see his potential, which was why he was eager to get the dog out on the ground. He was desperate to get the camera so he could send us photos of Diesel, his mate, going through his paces. I could sense his restlessness and the boredom in waiting for something to happen, but for us at home there was a greater distraction – the fear that something could happen to him.

From the time the conflict began in 2001 there was always enough on the TV to enable families back home to build a pretty clear picture of the hostility that faced our sons and daughters in Afghanistan. My son was out there, and that brought the war onto our doorstep, and in our own way we were living it, too, but it was no dream. And for Kenneth, home became much more than just where he lived.

Looking back it’s amazing how quickly his being away became part of our daily lives. It was a good job that his sisters understood and were never jealous, because in a sense Kenneth was still with us – making us laugh, making us mad and making us run around him, all the while, unintentionally, being the centre of attention. Through his phone calls home and his letters, Kenneth, the cheeky chap, the joker in the Rowe pack, was as close to us as he could be for a dog soldier in Afghanistan.

He might not have been with me in person, and maybe he was too far away for me to ‘read’ (he always said I was a witch because I could always read his mind – he knew he could never hide anything from me), but his moods and concerns were right there in his blueys. The salutation was usually enough to set the mood – Hello Mam, Hi Parents, Olla Mamma, Howdy Mother – and hinted that he was upbeat and excited about something. I was always wary when I got a Hi Mam or just Hi. When that happened I prepared myself for a letter that was going to be along the lines of one of our late-night chats we had at home – the kind of conversation that started when no one else was around. We’d make a cup of tea and then he would tell me what was making him angry or sad, ask me for advice or just talk and reach conclusions himself. I would hold him and tell him it was all going to be OK and he must not worry.

We could still do that in a letter and my heart would pound when I read his sign-off: ‘Cheers, Mam, you’re a star as always. I couldn’t survive without you by my side every step of the way. All my love as always. Ken xxx and Diesel xxx’

We realised later that after he called and spoke to his dad on Thursday evening his plans to come home must have changed. I was still on my journey back from Carlisle when he called to tell Ken that he would be back at Bastion later. He must still have been at FOB Inkerman at that stage so it must have been after that that he asked to stay the extra day with the men of 2 Para. He found out that his replacement wasn’t due out right away, which would have left the troops without a bomb dog and handler for 24 hours. Kenneth wouldn’t have wanted that, so I understood why he volunteered to stay behind. And, knowing Kenneth as I do, I believe that he would have insisted he stayed.

He was killed just hours later.

I have a lot of ‘blanks’ from that time. I could blame the pills but the result is still the same – I feel ashamed. It’s awful. I have gaps and I want to fill them but the memories are so fragmented: I start to remember and then I hit a blank. Then I feel I know something but then … blank. I want it all back – the lost time. I often wonder, did I take too many pills to block out the pain?

Few people expected to be made welcome over the next couple of days and I’m sure that included visits from the military, but out of everyone we needed to see they were the people who could tell us what happened to Kenneth and what would happen next. I really needed to know.

The next day brought Major Chris Ham (now Lieutenant Colonel retired) and Staff Sergeant Iain Carnegie (now Captain Carnegie with the Australian Army) to the door. I’m sure we were everything they expected us to be, but we couldn’t be anything else. Both knew Kenneth well and had served with him.

I wanted to hear that he was well liked and good at his job. I heard that Kenneth was all of that and more and that he would be sadly missed by everyone he had ever served with. And that he loved his family very, very much.

Iain and Chris were familiar names to me. Kenneth had talked about them since he joined the RAVC in 2005. Major Chris Ham had been his Commanding Officer at the Defence Animal Centre in Melton Mowbray and Iain his Company Quartermaster Sergeant (CQMS) in Northern Ireland, but they were in his world and now they were in our lounge, in full uniform, telling me how my son would be missed by everyone who had the pleasure of serving with him and who had spent time with him as their friend. They were talking about Kenneth. My son. I was in the room but in another way I was in another world. It was someone else’s world. How could it be mine? I was listening to everything that was being said but it had no relevance to me.

As they left I heard them both offer their help to the family and ask Ken if he was all right. My husband, my gentle giant, said it all in a few words: ‘I’m gutted but very, very proud of my son.’

When Ken came back into the room we sat together and cried.

I don’t remember stopping.

It was good of Major Ham and Iain Carnegie to visit us at home. I realised later that they didn’t have to make that drive from North Luffenham, 104 Military Working Dogs Support Unit and Kenneth’s Army base, to Newcastle, but they wanted to. It was their personal choice and it couldn’t have been easy for them either. Kenneth’s death must have been as much of a shock to the other dog handlers and trainers as it was to us. They all seem to know each other, whether Army or RAF, and although we always think the military must take the news of a death in battle in their stride I now know that it’s not like that at all. Kenneth was part of the Army’s family as much as he was part of ours. They had lost one of their boys, one of their own.