'Sacmis' (formerly 'Alien Abduction')

Chapter 4: The Soldier

A second 8-month tour of duty in Afghanistan was more than enough for even the toughest of guys. Except Lieutenant Amisha Chatterjee wasn’t one of the guys. 

In fact, she was about as far from being a typical British soldier as you could get. Women in the Armed Forces were now a familiar sight, but an Indian woman in uniform was still a bit of a surprise.

‘Surprise’ didn’t quite do justice to her family’s reaction. Shock, anger, disappointment and incomprehension would all have been closer to the mark. Good Indian girls from successful middle-class Indian families did not join the Army. After University (leaving with a First Class degree, of course) they went into the professions, becoming doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or - if they insisted on going off the rails - they joined the BBC. Any of which could be a reason for pride, rather than shame.

But she had been determined. And thanks to a Father who had been incapable of denying his youngest anything since she was three, she had eventually carried the day.

Three years later, as she pulled on her combats following a freezing Afghanistan night, she smiled as she thought back to the day she had passed out of officer training from Sandhurst. Her family - father, mother and two older brothers - had all been there and despite all their reservations, they had been genuinely proud to watch her salute as she marched past the podium. Her Mother had certainly cried, although Amisha suspected a mix of emotions in her particular case. It was a good thing they couldn’t see her now.

As she stepped out of her tent into the freezing dawn, a familiar voice called out to her:

“Hey, Chatty, I hear you’re with us this morning.”

The nickname - both predictable and unavoidable - had arrived almost immediately she joined up. The British - and particularly the British Army - seemed incapable of calling anyone by their real name, especially if they considered it either a bit exotic (which it was) or hard-to-pronounce (which it wasn’t). But it was meant in good part and she never felt it had any suggestion of racism.

Besides, the meaning of her first name in Hindi was “Beautiful” but she had been wise enough to keep this to herself since “Hey, Beautiful!” called across the Officers Mess was a risk not to be taken. Particularly since she more than lived up to her name. 

Standing only 5 ft 4 inches in her socks, she had escaped being stocky or plump and was really quite slight, something that led some of her fellow officers (including the women) to wonder whether she was  strong enough for the job. But their doubts disappeared when they had to face her in unarmed combat sessions, quickly realising that her tiny frame carried some hard muscle, combined with a vicious turn of speed. 

Simply enormous eyes in a perfectly oval face completed the picture. But what most women envied most about her was her skin: it was flawless, a silky-smooth walnut brown that once prompted one of them to ask bitterly “Chatty, do you actually have pores like the rest of us?” To make matters worst, she hardly ever seemed to sweat, even in the hot season when temperatures in Afghanistan would soar to 340 C.

“Sir!” she called back, snapping her best salute, deliberately overdoing it.

“Bit early for all that enthusiasm, isn’t it, Chatty? We’ve a long patrol ahead.”

Captain Adam Whittaker was about five years her Senior and on his third tour in the region. He was the picture of an English officer, almost a cinema stereotype: tall, fair, open-faced. There had been moments during the tour when she suspected he might have other than comradely feelings for her. But previous experience had taught her to be cautious where White Englishmen were concerned.

It had happened at University. 

In the desperate free-for-all of Freshers week she had met Nigel - or ‘Nij’ as he preferred to be called. Unlike most relationships formed in those first frantic days, theirs failed to wither overnight but continued into their third year, lovers and fast friends. To the point where she had begun to think - perhaps even wish - that their relationship might outlast Uni. But all that came crashing down one night in the Union bar after finals.

She’d gone to the loo and, returning unseen in the crush, she had overheard him talking to one of his mates on his mobile. “Party? Great. Bring Amisha? Of course I’ll bring Amisha - I wouldn’t go anywhere without my little poppadum.”

At first, she thought - hoped - that she had misheard, but she knew that she hadn’t. Theirs had seemed such a contemporary relationship, free of any hang-ups, but those four words made her feel that, in his mind, she was no different from the bibis that English officers had taken to their beds 150 years earlier in colonial India. 

“Come on - it was just a joke! I didn’t mean it,” he shouted above the noise when, turning, he realised from the look on her face that she had heard. “Amisha, come on…”

“Goodbye, Nij,” was all she had said as she turned on her heel and walked crying out of the bar.

The fact that not once after that night had he tried to reach her confirmed her worst conclusions.

Now, standing there in the compound in Helmand province as the platoon formed up, men seemed even more of a problem than before. For obvious reasons, she was cautious of Englishmen but - and this made her feel incredibly disloyal - she hadn’t been much taken with any of the Indian boys with whom her Mother had not-so-subtly engineered meetings. They had all seemed a bit shallow, just a little bit flash, but even thinking this made her wonder whether she wasn’t perhaps a snob and - far, far worse than that - a prejudiced one.

So there had been no sex since Nigel (three years!) and since there was no way she was going to take the slightest risk of compromising herself with a relationship within the regiment, her sexual landscape looked totally uninhabited.

The immediate landscape outside the compound looked just as bleak. Today’s mission was a sweep through a number of villages that found themselves caught in the middle between the Taliban and the NATO Military Alliance. Amisha’s role - as an FEO  (Female Engagement Officer) -  was to make contact with these unfortunate people and somehow keep them on-side. She had spent 18 months in the Army’s school at Beaconsfield learning Pashto and she was near-fluent. But her ‘hearts and minds’ role did not exempt her from wearing full body armour, and carrying a heavy pack and SA80 rifle.

Female soldiers in Afghanistan were non-combatants, meaning they were not required for front-line fighting. But this was in so many ways a contradiction, since the ‘frontline’ was anywhere the Taliban decided to strike. So - just like the rest of the guys - she fully intended - and was expected - to use her weapon if their unit came under fire.

Which was exactly what happened barely three hours into their patrol.

They had just dismounted from their Warrior armoured vehicle when it was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. Reacting automatically, her section dropped to the ground and crawled for cover. Amisha found herself behind a low wall, squeezed between Adam Whittaker and another NCO. 

“Stay here!” Adam yelled in her ear and, catching the eye of the NCO they both leaped over the wall to move forward.

Amisha, here ears still ringing from the blast, unslung her rifle, cocked it and shifted into a crouch. Raising the weapon to her shoulder she looked rapidly through the sights to her left and right. Nothing. A second later, the air around her seemed to glow, blinding her and crushing her down again onto the stony ground. Her last despairing thought before she passed out was ‘I’ve been hit.’

© Adriana Nicolas 2014