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was going to be. I only knew that I didn’t want to get hurt. If the Taliban had seen fit to publish a “Forecast of Events”, then maybe I could’ve made an informed decision. Sadly, they had no media planner to keep us journalists informed about their future movements. They just did what they did on a seemingly random basis, attacking coalition troops whenever it took their fancy, terrorizing all our mothers in the process.
    * * *
    My colleagues at BBC Radio Leicester reacted to the news of my departure in a slightly different manner to that of my mother. They threw me a leaving party at a lap-dancing club. Remarkably, all the girls in the newsroom came as well. I think they looked upon the excursion as a kind of anthropological field trip, an opportunity to peer under the rock where drunk and/or lonely men go to stare at naked women.
    I enjoyed it, anyway. We all drank an incredible amount of vodka, then everyone chipped in for a lap dance, buying me ten minutes with a peroxide blonde who’d squeezed herself and her Hindenburg breasts into a Stars and Stripes Lycra dress. I had just a short moment to contemplate the significance of our special relationship with the US, then the dress came off and the Hindenburgs were in my face, threatening to crash-land onto my forehead before veering back up again, floating around in a dreamlike sequence that was over all too quickly.
    Two days later I started my pre-deployment training at Chetwynd Barracks in Chilwell, just down the road from my home. Myhangover had just about cleared by then, so I was ready for all the inglorious demands of mobilization: filling in forms, pissing into test tubes, getting injected, practising battlefield casualty drills and shooting on the range in the freezing January rain. I was a full-time soldier again, on the regular payroll until my scheduled return to BBC Radio Leicester in September. It felt good – the pay was much better, and there was plenty of leave to look forward to, in between all the military stuff. I had a sporadic timetable of training up until mid-March, then I’d fly out and do my thing in the desert for four months, before flying back in time for the tail end of the English summer. Already I was imagining myself in my garden, sitting on the patio in the undemanding August sunlight, sipping a gin-and-tonic, the war safely behind me.
    Some volunteer for war because they want to fight, and some volunteer because they want to come back. No prizes for guessing which group I belonged to.
    I had a lot of time to prepare for my deployment on 10th March, but in the end it all turned into a mad rush. I left my packing until the last day, which is never a good idea. By the time I’d stuffed all my kit into my issued black holdall and my Bergen rucksack, there was barely any room left for personal items. Even the books I was hoping to take had to stay behind. I made a desperate last-minute attempt to force Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon into the holdall, but it refused to go.
    My woeful lack of personal organization meant there was little time for goodbyes, which was probably a blessing. I bolted down a final meal at my parents’ house – beef stir fry, a favourite of mine – before giving my teary-eyed mother a farewell hug, promising I would “keep my head down”. The two dogs, Monty and Trudie, got a quick pat and a scratch, then I had to go.
    My father gave me a lift to Chetwynd Barracks, where I had to pick up my rifle and pistol before taking the military transport down to Brize Norton. We didn’t say much on the way there: we just listened to the radio, making occasional small talk. Neither of us had any desire to chat about Afghanistan, but what else was there?
    Only when we were saying goodbye did my father give me some advice. He parked outside the armoury at Chetwynd Barracks, helped me with my bags, then shook my hand and hugged me.
    “Look after number one,” he said.
    Look after number one . It