Assurances and Reality...

The feelings are I suppose a moment of emptiness, a moment of “imagine if I didn’t come back and I could never see Beth again… my family or my friends...” just that moment of thought causes a great empty feeling inside and mixed emotions of worry. I wouldn’t say worry of not coming back but worry of not seeing them again, sounds strange but its hard to explain. The best way to explain the surreal feeling is we all had a barbeque at our friends Ben and Sharon, it was a great day the sun was out and the beer was flowing thick and fast. For a moment I sat down and the thought popped in my head “its not long till I leave and we won’t be doing this again before then so imagine if this is the last time ever in my life I’m going to be sat here having a barbeque getting wasted with my mates..” That’s surreal because it would be easy to sit down and do that and imagine if you got hit by a bus after the barbeque but you know that’s highly unlikely. When you know the potential is real and you have a moment of thought like that it does hit home, in an unexplainable fashion. I actually mentioned to Warner what I had just been thinking and he just looked at my and said “Already been there mate…”. I could see that look in his eyes I recognised it as that unexplainable feeling I’d had. The names of those selected to go to Iraq were read out at TA last Tuesday me and Warner were on the hit list, I was glad because we all finally new for definate we were going as I think you just need that concrete “PTE Hubbard” being called out in such a way so then you know 100% your going so you can start preparing your life. The good news was out of the list of names called they were all good blokes and allot of experience between them, Iraq, Afghanistan. I don’t know all of them really well but I know enough to know I would trust them all and all the NCO’s going are good blokes that know there shit. As me and Warner are still at the bottom of the food chain it seems the job allocation has rendered us as Gunners, basically Minimi gunners for the whole tour. Then again that’s just provisional it could all change in the 8 weeks pre-training, I’d like to try and get trained as a driver and medic leaving more options and possibilities of going out on some of the good jobs when people are ill etc over the 6 months, the more strings to your bow the more opportunities there will be. Just after the announcement was made by captain Crooke we had an intelligence brief, one of our annual requirements. As with most PowerPoint slide shows these days the person who’s put the presentation together put a few video clips in to keep our interest and spice it up. In this particular presentation there was short video found by British forces in Iraq only about 4 months previously, the content was a recruitment video for suicide bombers made by insurgents. It was all in Arabic but you got the gist visually, the bombers in a room together praying and congratulating each other on there soon to be death and passages to there god. Then a video of a bomber getting into a truck and then following the truck all the way to a massive detonation. The detonation was raw and graphic. I think I held my breath for a few seconds again sensing the graphic reality of where we were all headed. I took a look around the room and there were several stony faces all transfixed to the screen and you could see in there faces they were having a brief moment of reality like me. One thing I have noticed and I suppose it comes with the territory being in the TA is the mis-understanding and non realisation of what we’re actually doing by the general Joe public. Since we’ve had the definite 100% “Yes your going”. The comments vary and in all fairness most people do understand. However the ones who don’t they really manage to insult me but by that I don’t mean any offence as these words are not meant that strongly but I can’t think of another way of expressing the feeling, with comments varying from “So are you going to be helping the Army while your out there”, we are the Army….!! “Are they going to let you have a gun, I know some of the TA get to use guns some times” Insulting and patronising…. To be fair though its not any ones fault they think this way as its just the wide spread lack of knowledge and ancient views on the TA “the weekend warriors” shared by most of the British public, just a bunch of blokes trying to play soldiers. It’s never actually explained in great detail to the public to what degree the TA are needed within the armed forces and how well trained we really are. If the TA didn’t exist then all the people who don’t understand and maybe don’t want to understand would have realisation first hand as there loved ones are conscripted due to there being no Army to carry out these roles around the world. Then there’s the people whose family’s husbands, wives, boyfriends etc have been in the regulars for years and they’ve heard all the talk and banter about the TA. One particular question was “so are you having any training!!?” sounding very startled, “yes about 8 weeks” and then a laughed response “8 weeks?” I new exactly what was meant how can we go out there after only 8 weeks training as we’re just TA surely we won’t cope this opinion based purely on ancient views and old fashioned barrack banter by regulars about the TA. The TA is part of the British Army 10,000 TA troops have been through Iraq over the 3 years of a force sizing at about 10,000 in total. We’re going out as an Infantry company to do an Infantry job the same as the regulars because for 9 months we are regulars as we are no different to them, we’re trained to the same standard and do the same work with the same risks. Well we may get paid a bit more as you’ve got anything from solicitors and police men to plumbers and MacDonald workers all working as infantry soldiers but the wages are normally made up to a standard your used to, that’s just another perk of the TA along with the fact that after our tour we can just go back to our jobs and carry on with a normal home life for the years to come...

Arrival to an emotional point..

As life passed me by and I was eventually too old to actually rejoin the Army the realisation I had missed out hit me. I had passed up on a life time goal the one thing I have ever truly wanted to achieve. That was always in the back of my mind year upon year but through being busy all the time that’s were it stayed firmly in the back of my mind. I’m naturally a busy person always squeezing as much as I humanly can into my life. My main focus for years has been DJing on the Hard House circuit with my DJ partner Cheadle, performing together as “Cheadle and Hubby”. As with every thing I do I’ve always been passionate about DJing and always tried to carry that in the sets and performance delivered, just like my attempt at the Army we’ve been tantalisingly close several times, different opportunities and breaks have presented themselves but something’s always happened to change the situation. More recently over the last 3 years I’ve been promoting a club night called Invasion with some friends and started a small web design business so I have been busy. Remembering all that is in my spare time as I have a full time office job working for BT. Eventually after being close a couple of times I made the choice to join the TA which looking back was definitely the right thing to do in fact I wish I had done it sooner. On joining the TA I didn’t realise how much they were actually used on operations, I thought it would be good fun something different to do at the weekend, keep me fit and maybe it would fill that empty void I had in my life after my failed attempt at the regulars. However through time, talking to the guys there and taking it all in I realised I had made one of the best decisions of my life, it seemed that after all I will be getting my chance, the opportunity to live out my dreams and aspirations. Whilst going through training the buzz word was Iraq every one going through the training new from there own company that our regiment was the next to go the following year. Every one was desperate to get through the training and into the main stream so they would have the opportunity to go. Our training was quite intense trying to fit it all into a few weekends a ten day camp and then a 2 week camp at the British Army’s main infantry training centre, ITC Caterick. I joined the TA with Warner a good friend and soon to be I’m sure a friend on a different level as we’re both going to Iraq. I’m glad Warners coming as well, we’ve been friends for a long time and we share the same friends so it doesn’t seem like I’m leaving everything behind as there’s going to be a permanent reminder over there with me, if that makes any sense. Also I couldn’t really think of any one better to share this adventure with. Fear, that’s one word I haven’t really thought about but if I said I hadn’t thought about it at all that would be a lie. I suppose what I mean is in the same breath I have felt afraid in a different way than excepted. The obvious fear is the fear of death but that’s not something I’ve thought about as I can’t see myself allowing my brain to think about that. In my life I have become well rehearsed in hiding emotions, dealing with great emotional situations and burying them quickly, controlling emotions and subsequently I suppose hiding them. So I’m confident that sort of fear is not something that will trouble me. The emotions I have been feeling when I actually do take a moment to think are a mix I suppose you could amount to fear but a different fear to the obvious. If I wasn’t writing this and I read this as it was being written by one of the lads I would probably be thinking “Christ this is a bit deep! We’re only going over to Iraq for 6 months” but in the immortal words of Morphius from the film the matrix “I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes?” The whole situation has the potential to become very surreal as from this side it’s a job and we’re going away working for 6 months the risks involved are part of the job like the sales targets you work to in your daily job or the possibility of a customer complaining or the printer running out of paper. That is why it seems so unrealistic to think about fear as it’s so easy to pass all this off as something allot easier to handle. The only time the emotions kick or the brain starts ticking is when I really take a moment to think mainly when I’m with Beth my girlfriend or with friends...

Going To War....

It would be strange for me to say it’s a difficult thing to imagine, as all my life since I could string a thought together of my own and actually understand what I watched on TV as a very young boy I’ve been imagining it. Although with age and the inevitable awareness of the real world, the vision I have has distorted to a vision based more on reality and I suppose uncertainty. As I grew up watching all the war films I could find and playing soldiers till I was old enough to join the cadets I wanted to be a soldier. Coming with the dream of being a soldier is that inner feeling the only true way of achieving that life goal is to be a soldier in a theatre of war, a soldier at war. To have experienced that I would have experienced the one thing I have needed to experience all my life. Needed may be a strong word to use but I suppose it comes back to what parents say about there children, he just needs to get it out of his system. I suppose that could be one answer or it could be I’m built differently to lots other people and this is just something I need to do for myself and will continue to do after the first time as its what I may be destined for. I did have thoughts that the ambition I had of joining the Army would not be a life long career as there were other things that interested me in life other than running round in green with a rifle. When I left school I went to college and completed 2 years education in computers, with the purpose that if my dreams of soldiering didn’t come to be reality I would have qualifications to fall back on. Mind you if my ambitions were achieved, I wouldn’t really be gaining any qualifications to use in civilian life any way so I would need prior qualifications. I wanted to be an Infantry soldier, the infantry giving the largest chance to be in the thick of it if the chance came to go to war, that’s the basic facts of a young boys dream that evolved with time. The only qualifications gained as an Infantry soldier would revolve around killing and the tactics of killing. The only opportunities I could think those talents would bring me if I tried to use them in civilian life would be the headline news due to a comfy position in a clock tower or a random spree in a shopping centre. So my life took its selected path my dreams of soldiering were over after being medically discharged from the Army during training still with aspirations of rejoining to complete my dreams. Getting back to civilian life and joining the rat race, becoming restricted by all those things we call a life. A career, girlfriend and a social life. All those things soon put a comfy stop to my desire and choice to return to the Army with all considered I had got to the point of no return....