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The Beige Beret |
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When they found him they brought him down the mountain on a stretcher because the weather was too bad for a helicopter. The low clouds were grey and bloated, with more rain and tendrils of drizzle-mist hugging the barren rocks. It was hard for them to walk because the rain had undermined the surface terrain but even from a distance I could tell that he was dead. Perhaps it was in the way they handled the stretcher. Or in the way they had lashed him to it with those broad nylon straps. Or in the way they did not talk to him. Or in the way the tarpaulin covered most of his face. They had left the top of his head visible where the beige beret fitted over his brown hair. Adams, who co-ordinated the search with the civilians at the Storey Arms rescue centre, said he had died about half a kilometre from the next - tented - RV. Well within sight of the help he would have seen last night as the pale light filtered through the walls of the tent. Exposure is an insidious enemy and you don't realise that you have it until you collapse. Even with the best training in the world it could get you. And it had got him. They didn't have to tell me that because I had overheard them talking. Throughout the night I had haunted the lorries and the Land Rovers and the instructors as they stood waiting around the headlights with mugs of tea in their fists. They had talked about the weather, and where he was last seen, and by who, and when. There had been no regret in their voices, just a professional concern for a missing body. A body called Hughes. Now, he was just a body of no intrinsic value and not a man and all he had said and done were nothing but memories for those left behind. I was one of them. Three days on Brecon Beacons in bad weather tells you more about a man than anything. When you are leaked on by the same leaks, eaten the same Ghurkha rations from the same mess tins with the same spoon, and stepped in the same sheep shit, you get to know a man very well. Hughes was OK. But not anymore. They loaded him feet first into the field ambulance and just before they closed the doors I removed his beige beret to keep as a memento. Apart from my memories it was all I had of him. And memories would fade with the natural amnesia of time. Adams saw me take the beret, but said nothing. I had never liked him. He was too hard, and unforgiving. Yet his eyes were unusually compassionate and in that instant we had crossed the barriers or rank, protocol and age. Perhaps he had done or experienced something similar somewhere else in the world. He understood. They closed the doors of the ambulance and drove off into the shrouded valley towards Brecon. "Get in" Adams said. I opened the door of the Land Rover and climbed in beside him. We followed the ambulance with its symbols as huge as cart wheels all the way towards the hospital in the rain. We said nothing all the way. Even when we passed the hospital towards Bradbury Lines we still said nothing. "Late dinner" was all Adams said as we went through the gates. "Yah" I nodded. In those moments I became like Adams. And in doing so, I think I began to understand him. Men are not supposed to cry, but this one does. In private. It is one of the reasons I avoid Remembrance Sundays as much as possible. For how many are there who can understand the meaning of the motto Who Dares Wins? Only Adams and I. |
| ©2003 by Nigel Kemp |
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