Читать книгу Wherever You Are: The Military Wives: Our true stories of heartbreak, hope and love - The Wives Military - Страница 14

Lauren Bolger

I was staying with my mum when I got the call. Gavin was out in Afghanistan, on his first tour after joining the marines, and I’d gone back up north rather than stay on my own with our baby, Clay, in Plymouth, where I didn’t really know anyone. I was pregnant, and until that moment my biggest worry was that I would be very fat when Gav saw me again.

It was about noon when the phone rang. I’d just fed Clay and put him down for a sleep. I didn’t recognise the number that came up on my mobile, and when someone official-sounding came on the line I thought I was in trouble for not letting the welfare people know that I’d gone to Mum’s. Then when he said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I thought it was a wind-up.

The man asked, ‘Are you on your own?’ Finally he said there had been an explosion, and Gavin had been injured. He said he was fine, and that he would have rung me himself but he was just being cleaned up.

I can’t remember much of the rest of the conversation. I was shaking. But I remember the man said it was an IED (improvised explosive device), and I remember asking, ‘Can he see?’ For some reason, I thought: If only he can see, everything will be all right; I can cope with anything else. I just couldn’t bear the idea that he wouldn’t see Clay or the new baby. The man on the phone said he could see, and that he had injuries to his legs, his right arm and the right side of his face.

Then I had to go and tell his mum, who lives near my mum. That was terrible, as his mum worries. Gav didn’t even tell her that he was being deployed when he first went out there – he was that worried how she’d take it. Then we all waited. I’d been a bit reassured when the man on the phone said Gav would ring me himself – I thought that meant he was not too bad – but the wait seemed to last for ever.

After a few hours Gavin rang from the hospital at Camp Bastion. He said he was fine, and that he only had cuts and bruises, but I could tell from his voice that he was dopey from medication. It took 24 hours for him to get back to Britain, and he was taken straight to the military hospital in Selly Oak. A Royal Navy officer picked me and Clay up, and his mum and his dad, who are separated, came too.

Seeing him was such a relief. You don’t know what they are going to look like. He was smiling, which was incredible. I didn’t care what injuries he had as long as he was alive, could see, and was smiling and talking.

He was in hospital for three weeks, and we stayed in a hotel that was full of families of other injured men. Gavin told me he was the sixth in a line of men out on patrol when an IED that was planted in a wall was detonated remotely. He felt the heat, and knew he had been injured, but he was able, probably through a surge of adrenalin, to get to his feet and walk. He saw other lads on the floor, even more seriously injured than he was.

Six of them were picked up by helicopter. Gavin’s boot was cut away, and the leg of his trousers and sleeve of his shirt were cut off. At Bastion he wanted to phone me but was put under anaesthetic straightaway. He woke up with bandages on his arm and legs.

At Selly Oak he was taken into the operating theatre to be cleaned up and stitched a couple of times under anaesthetic. He had a fractured right ankle and lung damage, and his hearing had been damaged.

When I met Gavin I had no idea about military life. He wasn’t in the marines when we got together, but he’d been in the army before. He joined up when he was 17 and was in until he was 22. He came out because his mum was ill, and he did normal jobs for seven years. When I met him he was a window fitter and I was a hairdresser. Our families both come from Glossop, near Manchester, and our granddads knew each other. Gav was mates with my brother Carl, and that’s how we met, in a nightclub.

Gavin always missed being in the forces. When he said he wanted to go back in I didn’t mind, because I knew it was what he wanted. He enjoyed the challenge of becoming a marine, but it was a hard training for him because he was a bit older than most of the others.

Nothing really prepares you for being a military wife. I was happy to move down to Plymouth with him – I liked the idea of moving to a different place and new opportunities opening up – but I didn’t know what to expect.

He finished his training in January 2010, and we got married six months later, when I was expecting Clay. Gavin likes boxing, so he chose the name after Cassius Clay. We organised the wedding in three weeks, which is very fast, but I’ve heard now about other military wives who did it just as fast. It started out as just two witnesses in a registry office; then it was extended to close family; and in the end it was a full-blown wedding, and a really great day. It was a good laugh, and Gav got hammered.

We moved into married quarters in Plymouth when Clay was four weeks old. We’re not on a patch: it’s a house rented for us, but that means there are no other military families around us. I always knew Gav would go to Afghan soon; he wanted to do a tour as soon as he could after his training. I thought I knew all about the dangers. You can’t think about it all the time or you’d be a nervous wreck. You just have to accept it’s his job. I found out I was pregnant with Imogen a month before he left. We didn’t make a thing of saying goodbye. He just said, ‘See you.’

I cried when he’d gone, but not in front of him: the last thing he needs is to think about me crying. He says himself that if you think about home all the time you end up dead. I wanted him to know he didn’t have to worry about us.

I didn’t know anybody here. Clay was only six months old and I was pregnant, so Mum said: ‘Come home. Be around people you know.’

While Gav was away I was visiting his granddad, who was very poorly with cancer and died while he was out there, which was another reason to be up there and not in Plymouth.

Gav managed to phone regularly, and I sent e-blueys with pictures of Clay, who was developing fast. Gav missed him starting to walk, talk and eat proper food. I drilled Clay to say ‘Daddy’ on the phone.

Gav had been home for his R & R break, and he got an extra week because his granddad had died, although he just missed getting here for the funeral because his flight from Camp Bastion was delayed. Apart from his granddad dying, I felt everything was good. The days were going quickly, and Gavin was just cracking on with it. I couldn’t wait for him to get home, but in the meantime there were no problems.

Then the explosion happened, and everything changed. When he came out of hospital we spent six weeks staying with family in Glossop; then we went back to our house in Plymouth. Five weeks later, on the day he would have been due to return from Afghanistan, I went into labour with Imogen.

Gavin could walk a bit by then, and he’d gone to Brize Norton to meet his mates coming back. I was OK because his mum and my sister were with me, and by the time I had to go to hospital Gav was back. Soon after Imogen was born he started his rehab treatment at Headley Court, staying there Monday to Friday and returning home to us for the weekends, which he did for a few months. He’s now part of Hasler Company, the Royal Marines rehabilitation company, at HMS Drake in Devonport. I know he loves his job, and I support him. If he ever did go back to a war zone, I’d be in pieces, because I understand so much more now, but at least now I’d have the choir.