Vox Meditantis

Sunday, 30th November 2014

You want to know what I wear? What my two favourite things are to put on each morning, out here in this crack in the earth?

My rifle. That’s the first thing. Strap it on like a second spine. Becomes part of you after a while – weight of it, heft of it, the way it digs into your shoulder when you’re scanning the ridgeline. Been carrying this bastard so long I wake up reaching for it before I open my eyes. Metal and polymer, sure, but it’s more than that now. It’s the difference between going home and staying here forever, bone-white in the dust.

Second thing? My watch. Cheap bit of kit, nothing fancy. Cost me twenty quid back home, but out here it’s worth more than all the currency notes some Afghan elder tried to press into my hand last week, like paper could buy back his son’s life. Time’s different in a ravine like this one. Sun hits the far wall around 0600, crawls across like it’s got all day – which it has, and we don’t. Watch tells me how many hours till the next patrol, how many days till I rotate out, how many minutes I’ve been alive since the RPG hit third section’s vehicle. Tick, tick, tick. Sometimes I hold it to my ear just to hear something that isn’t wind or small-arms fire echoing off these canyon walls.

Thing is, everything changes out here except the ground. Same rocks, same dust, same narrow passage that could be a deathtrap or just another stretch of nothing. But us? We change. Lads I came in with – fresh-faced, full of chat – they’ve got that look now. That thousand-yard stare they warn you about in training but you don’t really understand until you’ve seen your mate’s leg twenty feet from the rest of him. Time grinds you down like water on stone, except faster. Way faster.

They told us we were making a difference. Coin of the realm, they said – hearts and minds, winning the locals over one handshake at a time. But currency doesn’t buy much when the valley’s full of blokes who’d rather see us dead. You can’t purchase trust with infrastructure projects and medical clinics when night falls and the Taliban come down from the high ground. Some transactions can’t be made, no matter how much you’re willing to spend.

This ravine runs six kilometres north to south. We patrol it twice daily. Same route, different day, waiting to see if today’s the day someone’s buried an IED in the track or if we’ll catch rounds from the eastern ridge again. It’s like Groundhog Day, if Groundhog Day could kill you. Everything’s always about to happen and nothing ever really changes. Except us. We keep changing. Getting harder. Getting quieter. Getting through.

So yeah, those are my two favourite things. My rifle and my watch. One tells me I’m still dangerous. The other tells me I’m still alive. Out here in this gash in the earth, that’s about all you can ask for.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.