Major Stanley Ekuton sat ramrod straight on the senior passenger’s seat in the Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) manoeuvring along the winding motorable track eight kilometres beyond the Kenya-Somalia border, his throat dry with agitation. His Commanding Officer’s last words were still fresh on his mind: OC, do not cross that border!
(Source: intelligencebriefs.com)Ahead, through the dust, the enemy was escaping.
“We should not be sitting ducks in the
camp when al-Shabaab come to attack us,” he had replied. “We, too, should take
the battle to them.”
And with that, Officer Commanding Bravo
Company, 80 Airborne Battalion of the Kenya Defence Forces, imposed radio
silence on his battalion tactical command headquarters.
“We are pursuing the enemy to the depths
of hell if we have to,” he had told his platoon commander. “Order the platoon
to cross the border—”
“But, Afande, we are not supposed to cross the border. The rules of
engagement—”
“Officer, adui ni yule unamwangalia akitoraka. Are we going to follow the
rules of engagement without reason?”
“No, sir, but ni vile naona inaweza kuleta shida.”
“In case of anything, I take
responsibility, sawa. Na ni mimi naongoza.”
“Yes, sir.” The platoon commander had
ordered his platoon to follow the OC.
His warrior spirit was awakened; only the
decimation of the enemy mattered. He saw the dust ahead rising, swirling up. He
would no longer follow the rules developed by idlers in air-conditioned offices
swinging from ergonomic chairs in Nairobi. Ati
troops operating along the border should never cross into Somalia!
To kill for his country, to defend his
motherland, was his duty. He was not going to let the enemy go.
Al-Shabaab had killed many a soldier
from his company, and his not being able to do anything had worn his nerves and
strained his command.
“Where are they?” he asked his driver.
“I don’t see the dust ahead.”
Hardly had the driver answered when he felt
a sense of fatalistic dismay as an RPG projectile appeared in his sight, headed
at the senior passenger’s side, aiming at him.
His eyes narrowed to slits, sweat
sliding down his face and drenching his face veil.
“Swerve to the right,” he yelled.
However, it was a nanosecond too late.
Before hitting the 20mm-thick
bulletproof windscreen, he winked, the projectile exploded, and he ducked. The
APC lifted off the ground, overturned airborne, hit the ground, rolled, and
stopped.
Thousands of shrapnel penetrated his
helmet, body armour, and struck off his limbs. Hot wind raged through the infernal
war machine as the explosion burned, his skin smeared from his shoulders, and
his body disintegrated. He tried to haul himself blind out of the doomed APC, but
nothing happened.
***
The
medivac medics took one look at Major Ekuton’s charred and scorched body and
nodded at each other in silent agreement: it was a VIP.
When the Y12 aircraft landed at Moi Air
Base in Eastleigh, medics first attended to the injured and wounded—sitting and
lying cases—moved them to the waiting ambulances ready to take them to the Base
Medical Centre and others to the Defence Forces Memorial Hospital.
When it came to the dead, the VIPs, one medic
realised that rigour mortis had not yet set on one of the VIPs.
“I’ve got a pulse,” she shouted. “One of
the VIPs.”
Medics swarmed to the plane and loosely
swathed his body in blankets, put it on a stretcher, and transferred it to the
Huey helicopter that was about to take off for a mission in Mombasa.
The Huey touched down on the helipad at the
DFMH, and a medical team was ready for him. Within no time, they took him straight
to the burns unit on the hospital’s emergency wing, into a quiet and secluded world
where everybody wore masks and long green sterile robes.
However, Major Ekuton sank in a dark
bottomless pit, not knowing that morphine was helping him stay there. He only heard
the distant, quiet voices of the masked figures as they worked over him.
“It’s third degree, fifty-four per cent—”
“Can’t be cleaned now, not until it stabilises.
It will be days before we can clean it.”
“The head surgeon will advise.”
The pain was an endless ocean across
which the waves rose and fell, the surf breaking at the shore of his soul.
Major Ekuton smelt burning gunpowder, petrol, and skin with the pain. Sometimes
he felt the prick of a needle, drugs fighting infection fevers, and a burning
thirst no amount of liquids could quench. Whatever he was going through, the
pain and hell were twins.
He crawled out of the pit one day and saw
eyes peering over white surgical masks.
“He has come out of it,” a voice
emanated from one of the masks.
But then, he drifted off again into the slough
of nothingness. The next time he opened his eyes, he met friendly, cheerful
faces, men and women proud of resurrecting the dead.
“He can now be moved to Elgon Ward,”
said a youngish surgeon whom he wished he could know his rank.
“Yes, sir,” a nurse in army uniform
beneath her white coat said.
“Ekuton, you are going to be fine. You
are out of danger now,” the surgeon told him. All he did was node.
In Elgon Ward, he was assigned his room.
“Sir, I’m Senior Sergeant Wavinya. I am
your assigned nurse. You are going to be fine.”
“How long have I been here?” He asked,
but he did not recognise his voice.
“Six weeks. But when they brought you
in, they thought you were dead. You are fortunate to be alive.”
Major Ekuton glimpsed the depths of her
compassion. “Thank you,” he replied.
During ward rounds, the following day,
one of the doctors, a brigadier, said to him, “Ekuton, we did our best to save your
life. You are once more a viable human being, though you lost a lot. We had to
do skin grafts and numerous surgeries to save your eyes, but your ears can be
reconstructed. For the face, you will never look the same again, and you will
live with some shrapnel in your head. It’s not risky, though.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the ward rounds, Ekuton asked
Senior Sergeant Wavinya for a mirror. Despite her protestations, he insisted.
The face that stared back at him did not
have eyelashes and brows, the eyes round and startled, with clumsy lids and
puffed dead-looking flesh beneath; the scalp was burned away and had a tight
lipless mouth. The skin and flesh was a patchwork, joined by seams of scar
tissue drawn tightly over his cheekbones; the nose a shapeless blob; and the ears
small bulges as though they were fastened haphazardly to the sides of his head.
When he moved his mouth to talk, it twisted
briefly in a horrid rictus and then regained its frozen shape.
I
can’t talk without straining. He
didn’t know he had said that aloud.
“No, sir,” Wavinya said. “You will have
to be more of a listener.”
***
The first visitor he got was a military
police officer, a lieutenant colonel loathed and infamous for his blind
obedience to authority disguised as abiding by the law to the latter. The
lieutenant colonel did not bother with niceties; he took the seat beside Major
Ekuton’s hospital bed and opened the file he had.
“Major Ekuton, Commander Kenya Army has
issued instructions for the formal resignation of your commission,” the senior
officer started, and Ekuton stared at him.
“I don’t understand,” Ekuton mumbled.
“This way, you will go home with
benefits.”
When he joined the forces, he wanted to defend
his motherland; kill, not die, for his country. Resigning his commission was
not part of the plan.
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you will be court-martialled for dereliction
of duty, breaking the rules of engagement, insubordination, and disobeying your
CO’s lawful orders.”
“I see,” Ekuton nodded. “I don’t have a
choice.”
“We both know how the court-martial
works. You will be found, you are, guilty as charged. Termination of commission
without benefits.”
Ekuton did not reply.
“Here are the necessary documents.
Please sign here, and here; your CO and Brigade Commander have already signed.”
Ekuton weighed all the options—he was
toast. He took the papers and signed.
“Sawa,
Officer.” The lieutenant colonel gathered the papers, placed them in the
folder, and rose to go.
Ekuton’s heart tightened and sank to the
pit of his stomach. “So, system inanitupa
sasa juu nime-cock …”
The lieutenant colonel stopped, stared at
Major Ekuton, his expression altered, and his cold eyes became portend.
“Officer, you are responsible for the deaths
of ten soldiers and destruction of two APCs, weapons, and ammo; disobeyed your
Commanding Officer; broke the rules of engagement; and displayed lack of sound
judgement as an officer,” he paused and drew a deep breath. “Military Police recommendation
was that you be tried by court-martial and that the prosecution is instructed
to ask for the death penalty. But thank God uko
na wire mrefu, Officer, and these
political times are volatile. The Deputy President himself intervened, and that
saved you. So, badala ya kuongea mbaya
hapa, consider yourself very fortunate.”
And with that, the lieutenant colonel
left; his footsteps cracked on the floor and the pathway outside as he left
Elgon Ward.
Jeshi
ReplyDeleteYeah, militaries all over behave this way. Read Eagle in the Sky by Wilbur Smith.
DeleteA heart wrending narration...so will Major Ekuton receive the rest of his pending reconstructive surgery after this summary dismissal ? Or was he left twisting in the wind...a shell of his former self and, wallowing in a slough of despond ? Could the exacting MP Lt. Col not have waited for a more opportune time. The Lt. Colonel's austere and uncaring demeanour is the very epitomy of myopia and, the lack of tact.
ReplyDeleteWell, my beloved reader, is left to your imagination. Flash fiction is all about making you want to know more. But from my storyline, he received reconstructive surgery ... remember, he resigned, meaning he retired from the service with benefits.
DeleteThe picture that you paint is one of slapdash handy work by the hospital personnel. One is left to wonder whether DFMH is bereft of maxillofacial and/or plastic surgeons. The outcome of that piece of "reconstruction" churns the stomach. One can only gasp at the woeful ineptitude that Snr Sgt Wavinya's seniors exhibited intraoperatively. The outcome of the surgical intervention, if it can be called that, should only be mentioned, to be condemned. Perhaps they should hang a sign outside Elgon ward that reads "Abandon all hope, ye that enter here".
ReplyDeleteWell, your interpretation will depend on what you found in the story, necessarily the intended theme. However, the injury part was intended to show how badly the patient was injured, and how the medical personnel tried all they could to save him. Beyond that, it's open to the reader's interpretation.
Delete