Читать книгу Wherever You Are: The Military Wives: Our true stories of heartbreak, hope and love - The Wives Military - Страница 7

Katherine Catchpole

As soon as I heard his voice I knew something was wrong.

‘All right, babes?’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to panic, but I’ve had a bit of an accident.’

My husband, Andrew, was phoning from Afghanistan, on his first tour out there.

The bottom fell out of my stomach when I heard the word ‘accident’, but in my head I could hear this running commentary: he must be all right, as he’s talking to me. He told me he was in hospital with a suspected broken leg. When he put the phone down, I had no idea what to do. I’d gone to stay with my mum in Watford for a few days, taking with me our son Freddie, who was two, and I’d been changing Freddie’s nappy when the phone rang. I didn’t have an information pack with all the emergency numbers, and as we lived in Yeovil, but Andrew was serving with a unit from Plymouth, I didn’t know who to ring. In the end, all I could think of was to ring a friend who had been posted to Germany, and she promised to try to find out for me. There is an official drill, and I should have been informed, but somehow I’d dropped off the radar. My friend texted me to say she was trying to get some information, but I had a terrible night.

The next day I had a phone call from Andrew again. ‘All right, babes? I don’t want you to panic, but I’ve had an accident …’

By now alarm bells were ringing loudly: I hoped he’d got concussion and not a more serious head injury, but he clearly didn’t remember ringing me the day before, and I still hadn’t heard anything official. Eventually I got through to the right welfare number, but there seemed to be no record of him having an injury.

The next day, he rang again: ‘All right, babes? I don’t want you to panic …’

I was really panicking. I asked him if there was anyone else near the phone who could talk to me, but he said the nurse had just wheeled him over and left him there. I was getting desperate, especially when he told me he had a bad headache.

Finally, that afternoon, a liaison officer rang me. Looking back, I should have been making more of a fuss, but I just didn’t know how to. Now I don’t go anywhere without all the right numbers with me.

He was flown back to Selly Oak Hospital, in Birmingham (the centre for treating wounded servicemen). I was told that he had leg, arm and head injuries, caused by an accident when he was on a quad bike.

My dad drove me up to Birmingham while Mum looked after Freddie. When I saw Andrew he had a massive gouge in his head and a long line of stitches up his left arm; then they operated and put pins and plates in his ankle. There were bits of gravel stuck in his face, and where he had been badly shaved there were tufts of hair all over his chin. He was ashen grey, with bags under his eyes, and he looked 15 years older. But he was so pleased to see me. We cuddled and he told me he had a thumping headache.

After the relief of seeing him and holding him, I started crying and berating him. All that emotion, the relief, the fear, everything I’d held in while I didn’t know what had happened, exploded.

‘How could you do this to me? You’ve put me through hell,’ I said.

He was half-laughing, and then he grabbed me and said, ‘I’m really sorry.’

Part of me was happy that at least he was now off the tour. But being what he is, he told me straightaway that he wanted to get back out there. Although I would have loved him to stay at home, I know him well enough to realise he would not be happy if he didn’t get back out, and he would feel he’d let the others down.

So when he got home from hospital I used my nursing skills to help with the physio. I arranged private physio, acupuncture and massage for him, and then worked with him on the exercises.

He got back out there for the last six weeks of the tour. It was important to him. In a funny way, I was happy to see him go because it meant so much to him. He says it was down to me that he recovered well enough in time. ‘You fixed me,’ he says. He was elated to have qualified for the tour medal, and that feeling helped him get over the tour better than usual, although it was still a difficult time.

That was my worst experience as a military wife. Looking back, I was so green when I first met Andrew, a few years earlier. I had no idea what it was all about. It all started with a kiss at the end of a party. The town I come from, Watford, has no military connections and I didn’t have a clue about life in the forces; I didn’t know anyone who was serving. But I’m a big believer in fate, and I’m sure fate had a hand in bringing me and Andrew (who is known as ‘Catch’ to all his mates) together.

I was 18 and training to be a nurse when a friend persuaded me to go to a 21st birthday party. She planned to set me up with a local lad. I was feeling ill, with raging tonsillitis, and I nearly didn’t go. I wasn’t attracted to my blind date, and to be honest I didn’t feel well and didn’t want to be there, so I was trying to make my excuses to get home to bed when Andrew arrived late at the party, after returning home from a posting in Brunei.

He nearly didn’t go that night, and I nearly left just before he arrived. We almost didn’t meet.

A couple of months after we started going out, he went on a three-month tour of the Mediterranean, sailing to France, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Egypt. I learnt he was going from one of his mates. He was so casual about it, and I was distraught. I bought a big map and put it on the wall of my bedroom, and I cut out a little paper ship, which I moved about with pins, following his route. I sobbed all the time, saying to Mum, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ and playing our song, ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’ by Eternal, over and over. I had a wall-chart calendar and I was crossing the days off with a big red pen. The only thing I did was go to university; the rest of the time I was in my bedroom, being miserable.

Mum said, ‘You’ll have to toughen up. You have to live your own life when he’s away.’

I wailed, ‘But I don’t want to …’

And he wasn’t even anywhere dangerous! I really dragged it out. Now I’d just be glad he was going somewhere safe.

Early on, he gave me a catchphrase that covers everything that military life throws at us: ‘It’s life in a green suit, babes, life in a green suit.’ It covers all the problems his job brings with it, and if ever I say anything about his life my family repeat it back to me. I’ve learnt to accept it.

I fell in love with the man, and he is the job. It’s his life. It runs through his blood, and he is the man I love. For the first three years we were together I stayed at home in Watford, doing my training, and we saw each other whenever we could.

When he was away I used to go out with friends, but I always felt like a gooseberry because they had their boyfriends with them. Someone would ask me how long it was since I’d seen him and that would set me off. ‘It’s been 70 days, 8 hours …’ – even down to the minutes. It was like a digital clock in my head.

I’m a Cinderella nut so we had a huge Cinderella-themed wedding, complete with glass coach and glass slippers, and he was my Prince Charming, in uniform. Afterwards we moved together to Portsmouth, to a top-floor flat on a military patch.

My family couldn’t believe I was the one who moved away: I’m such a home bird. I know it doesn’t sound far, Watford to Portsmouth, but for me then it seemed a long way. Where I grew up I had my mum and dad and little sister, my big sister and her husband round the corner, my nan and my aunties and all my school and nursing friends nearby, and Andrew’s family not far away – I felt I was going to the other end of the country. It was a really big wrench.

At first we were welcomed by the neighbours. But as soon as Andrew put his marine uniform on they ignored us. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t understand – and I still can’t – why there are rivalries between different branches of the armed forces. A bit of friendly rivalry is one thing, but we heard about social things that we weren’t invited to, and that really hurt.

Most of those around us were naval people. I’d no idea a uniform could make such a difference. I was used to people being friendly; I’m a friendly person myself. Now I’d be tougher. My attitude is: I’m Katherine, I’m not a rank or a number. Or I’d mentally just say, ‘Stuff you.’ Luckily I had my job – I was doing a midwifery course in Southampton – and we made friends through that.

We moved to a house in Taunton a week before Andrew deployed for Iraq, and I unpacked the boxes while he went through his joining routine. I knew nobody. I didn’t even know where Tesco was. Luckily, the following week I started work, which helped me cope with him going somewhere dangerous for the first time since we’d met. It was a steep learning curve: a new town, a new home and all the worries of him being in a war zone. Once I got sorted it was, socially, a much better posting, and for the first time I made really good friends with women who were in the same boat, with their men out there too. It was my first taste of how supportive and strong a group of military wives can be.

It was meant to be a three-month tour, but it was extended several times, and he ended up serving seven and a half months out there. That was difficult to deal with. When he got home, he had changed, mainly because it was his first dangerous posting since we’d been together.

I’d always said I wanted children one day, but he had said he wasn’t ready. His parents had split up, and he was very conscious of not wanting to repeat that pattern. He’s a big softie to me, but at work he’s a textbook marine: he eats, sleeps and breathes it. It took him a few weeks to get over that tour, to come home mentally. Then, one night in bed, he told me that he’d never thought he could miss someone as much as he had missed me when he was away. For a moment I was a bit insulted: we’d been married three or four years by then, and I’d known before he went how much I would miss him.

He said, ‘I’m not very good at explaining things, but I never thought I could love you more than I already did. I never thought it could hurt as much as it did, missing you. You were the part of me I couldn’t get away from.’

He was so serious that I made a little tent out of the bedclothes and used my phone for a light to see his face.

Then he said: ‘I want us to have children. I’m ready. I realised out there, missing you so much that it was a pain in the pit of my stomach, that it doesn’t matter about anyone else. You and me are what we are. When I’m over this tour, back to being the normal me, I’d like to try for a baby.’

I was jubilant. It was a magic moment. We waited a couple of months, because I knew he needed time to recover, and then our son Freddie was born the following year.

People don’t realise that a six- or seven-month tour lasts, for us, for over a year. For six months before they go they are training hard; then when they come back they have to readjust, which also takes time. It’s hard. During the training it’s a real struggle for me: half of me wants to know what he’s preparing for; the other half wants to blank it out. He has the ability to shut off: I don’t know whether that’s his personality or whether it is something he has been trained to do. But I feel he has to stay open in order to stay close to me, and we are better at it now than we were. But I have to face the fact that, as the training goes on, in his head he is more and more out there.

I’m glad he is so well prepared, mentally and emotionally. But that doesn’t make it easier for me. It makes for a high-pressure marriage. The pre-training is very intense. In his first tour of Afghan he was in a specialist team, and it was important that they became a tight team before they left. There was no gentle progression: he was deep in it from the start of training. I tried to talk to him as much as I could, but I struggled not to feel excluded.

We say goodbye at home – he won’t do it in public, and I’m glad about that. If he is going to feel choked up, he wants to do it away from the lads, in private. That first tour of Afghan was really bad. I can’t hold it in when he leaves. I blub. Just talking about it now I can feel it: that choked-up sensation half in my chest and half in my stomach. I try to hold it back, but it’s like having terrible stomach cramps. Then he’ll say something and it’ll set me off. The last kiss goodbye is the longest kiss ever: you don’t want it to end.

When he did that first Afghan tour, the one when he was injured, Freddie fell asleep on my lap a few hours before Andrew left, and as Andrew carried him upstairs without waking him, I couldn’t stop myself thinking: This could be the last time he holds Freddie. I didn’t want to think it, but terrible thoughts like that just come into your head; you can’t stop them. I knew, anyway, that it was the last time he would hold Freddie for six months, and that when he came back Freddie would have changed so much. That was a gut-wrenching feeling.

He’s upset to leave us. But I can see, when he walks away, that he’s excited to be going; he’s pleased to be joining the lads and putting all his training to use. With maturity, I’ve come to realise that I’m glad he’s up for it, and it would be a lot worse for him if he was worrying about me and Freddie and home. A few years ago I’d never have dreamt I’d be saying I’m pleased he’s excited to go, but I am.

When he went to Afghanistan for his second tour, Freddie was five, just becoming aware of his daddy’s job. I never said the words ‘Afghanistan’ or ‘fighting’ in his hearing. I just told him, ‘Daddy’s doing lots of marching,’ because he’s seen them marching. Then, before Andrew went, we told Freddie that Daddy had to do SSM – a Super Special Mission – which only Daddy could do. Whenever I had a tough time with him missing his dad, I reinforced that Daddy was the only one who could do this SSM. I kept ringing the changes, saying that Daddy was doing some camping: I fixed on harmless elements of the job.

When he finally walks out I’m devastated, with nothing to look forward to except getting through. It feels as if my right arm has been cut off. The bed feels very empty, even though I am used to him being away. It’s always different when he is at war.

R & R is a strange time. I’m more used to it now, but on his first tour it was tough. He was here in body but not in mind. It was as if a video was playing behind his eyes all the time, as if he was looking at me but seeing something else. I was so glad to see him, touch him. But I struggled with trying to cuddle a man who was not there. I wasn’t prepared for it; I hadn’t thought through what it would be like for him, and how, in a way, his head had to stay out there. Now I know what to expect, and I’m glad if he stays out there in his head, because he has to go back.

Over the years I’ve got used to living in married quarters. I was thrilled with our first little flat, just because we were living together. Then I loved the house at Taunton. I painted a seascape on the bathroom wall, with sand and water, and ceramic plaques of starfish, crabs and a whale. I painted a wave that ran right round the room, and I sponged bubbles on to the wall of the downstairs loo.

But when you leave a quarter you have to put it back the way it was. You are inspected: it’s called the march out. They do a full inspection and write a report, telling you everything that has to be done. If you don’t do it, you have to pay for it. It took about eight coats of magnolia paint to cover my seascape. Cleverly, the men are never around when you have to repaint it … I thought then: I’m never doing that again. So now I have the decor in my things – pictures, photos, furniture and furnishings. I don’t paint the walls.

Andrew is now a colour sergeant. I’ve been with him all the way as he has been promoted. We moved to Chivenor in Devon in the winter, and it was hard to meet people, as everyone went everywhere in their cars. Freddie was in pre-school, but the other mums all seemed to have their friends. They didn’t ignore me, but I just didn’t crack it. The first couple of months here I felt I went backwards in my progression as a military wife. I kept thinking, Bring on Christmas, so that I could go home to my family. But it got better, especially after the choir started.