I pressed his cheek to mine and gave him a kiss... then his soul passed on
TIME stood still. I was under fire, pinned down and waiting to die. Then something flicked in my head. I remembered who I was and snapped into action.
Bing, Baz and I were a fire support team on patrol into ‘The Jungle’ – so called because it was riddled with Taliban and sheltered key commanders co-ordinating the laying of improvised explosive devices – IEDs – on our main transport routes.
We were crossing a track on a routine patrol when we were engaged from very close range by a burst of heavy automatic weapon fire.
Mark Chandler – known as Bing – was a junior NCO from my D Battery. He was older than me and one of life’s really good blokes. He had courage and resilience in spades.
Bing and I had been caught in the open. I jammed myself next to a mud wall then heard Baz yell: ‘Man down!’ I spun around to see Bing had been killed instantly: like a switch being turned off. Our friend.
I heard Baz begin to weep. At that moment, we were engaged by two further positions to the south. This was getting out of hand.
Baz started returning fire. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s f***ing dead!’ he shouted over the gunfire. I looked Baz in the eye. ‘Yes, mate, he’s f***ing dead.’
I called in emergency close air support, but they were 15 minutes out. We were on our own for now. I was still on my knees next to Bing’s lifeless body. A medic arrived and was busy shouting, trying to get a response.
But Bing was long gone. I lifted Mark’s lifeless body a couple of inches off the ground and someone else slid the stretcher under him.
We ran with the stretcher to a Husky armoured vehicle 400 metres away.
There, Bing lay on the stretcher at my feet. I thought for a moment. I felt sick.
We put him inside the Husky and I clambered in and picked up Bing’s body with a big bear hug, swung him round and sat down with him on my lap on the bench. I cradled him like a baby.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to him. ‘I’m so sorry, mate. You’re a good man. You’re a good man,’ I kept saying.
I pressed his cheek to mine and gave him a kiss. Staring at his face, for the first time I saw the scorch mark under his left eye where the bullet had entered, killing him instantly. I took off his Help For Heroes band and put it on my wrist.
His blood slowly seeped down my breast from the back of his neck; it was noticeably cooler than before.
I cradled him on the trip back to base. He was neither warm and alive nor fully cold and passed on. During those 40 minutes I think his soul left him. He wanted to check we all got out OK before he went.
Back in the UK, I apologised to his parents Mike and Ann Chandler. Ann was cross with me for apologising.
As soon as I left their house in Gloucestershire and got in the car, I broke down for the first time. Whatever pain I felt at that moment, I knew it was nothing compared to theirs.