CALUM, September 2016, The Falklands:

“I think it was over there you shot me. Am I right?”

I’m pointing at the spot, though I ken fine it’s only a guess. I just want him to confirm it.

Pablo nods. “Sí, I think it was around there. Yes, it was.”

He walks over to a stone and shows me where there’s a wee hollow in the ground. We’d thought it was a ditch, but it’s really just a hole. My daughter translates. He speaks Spanish, and we don’t have one of those translation apps like when we first found each other through that Facebook group. Feels like a long time ago now—longer, somehow, than the thirty-four years since he shot me that night.

Battle of Mount Harriet. The eleventh, twelfth of June, 1982.

*

At night. We were getting ready to storm the first Argentine trench. The frigate Yarmouth had lit them up well with a few 4.5-inch shells, and then it was our turn. Pulled out the Carl Gustav—bam—one more into their trench. Then I gave the signal for my lads to move forward.

That’s always the hard bit. One thing in training, quite another out there. You can’t ever make it the same. Plenty can go wrong. But even though we had to direct fire from the ship to about twenty metres from our position, no one got hurt, not then. They did what they had to do, and we relied on them to do it. Aye, like I said, we sent in our own stuff, then we just went for it.

Twenty metres. Twenty metres of eternity.

Then—snap. My leg went from under me. The pain—Christ. You ever bust a knee? It’s murder. The bullet went straight through the kneecap. I just keeled over.

And my first thought, before the real pain came, was: why? who? There wasn’t any fire from the trench yet; they were still reeling from the ship’s shells and our wee hello with the Carl Gustav. That was the point—to hit them while they were dazed. So how could that happen?

But of course, that was the point.

I look at Pablo—lines in his face, eyes heavy—and I ken he’s thinking his own dark thoughts, looking down at that place. So I don’t say anything.

That’s where the shot came from. They’d posted a sniper a bit further up, to the left of the trench. He had a decent view, though it was night and full of chaos. Still, enough.

Aye, I’ve wondered about that. I was standing up, ready to run forward. Why didn’t the bullet go through my head or my throat? We were asked to wear berets so we could tell each other from the Argentines—they had helmets. So he could have taken my head off. Natural thing for a sniper, even in the dark. Wouldn’t have been impossible, not at that range.

We stand there, staring. Caroline’s watching too. It must be hard for her, trying to picture it all—the stories I’ve told her, and all the trouble I’ve given her through the years. What’s she thinking? On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to ken.

I just want to say something that’ll help us move on, because I’m starting to feel a bit uneasy about being here. So I try a bit of humour, though I’m not much good at it.

“Alright, Pablo,” I say with a sigh. “Seeing as you put an end to my soldiering career right here, I reckon you owe me a pint later. And none of that fizzy lager, a proper bitter.”

I’m hinting, of course, that we should get off this bloody hill. It falls a bit flat, but he’s a kind man, Pablo. He gives me a wee smile and nods. Then he says, through Caroline, “For you, my friend, I will buy the whole barrel.”

“That’s the problem,” I tell him. “After what I put my liver through, a barrel wouldn’t even touch the sides.”

*

Anyway, we walk slowly, and I’m glad to leave that spot behind. But it’s not the relief I thought it’d be. The further we go, the worse I feel, because I’m not thinking about fear or pain anymore. The pain goes numb soon enough that night—someone gave me something, and I lay there most of the night while bullets went over me. What gets me now is that right there, my life as I knew it ended.

They could never quite fix the leg. I wasn’t completely invalid, but disabled enough that I couldn’t walk properly. Depends what you’re doing. I tried rangering for a while—Highland Rangers and such—and that worked well enough when I was in the car, but eventually it didn’t.

So you come home, and it’s just… over. Plans gone. Void where your life used to be. How do you feed your family now?

Trained all my life to serve, to fight for others. Then I had to rely on my wife, and my bairns, you know, to help me around. And that’s the worst of it. For years I didn’t manage well with the bottle. Started with a wee nip now and then, then more. That only made things worse. I see that now—been sober a good few years—but back then I just wanted to numb it all. Forget.

It’s hard to explain why you start drinking. There isn’t, like this hill here, a clear point where you say, I think I’ll become an alcoholic.

But that night—being shot—that had a clear before and after. The drink didn’t. It was like the mists in the Highlands, rolling in slow until you’re surrounded. Only it’s not a mist—it’s fog inside yourself.

I can’t quite say how to describe it. I just ken I’m not keen on going to the top of that hill right now. Maybe I’m afraid of what I’ll see.

*

So, we talk about the details, because they’re the hardest thing to sort on Facebook with Google Translate and all that. Up here, it’s easier. You can point at things. Pablo bends down now and then, picks up old razor blade packages from the Argentine rations, slips them in his pocket. I don’t ask why—maybe it’s his way of holding onto something, controlling something. We all have our ways.

It’s unpleasant, aye, but it’s also a kind of relief. Talking about positions and units distracts you from what you feel climbing this mountainside. And there’s plenty I feel just now.

We talk about which trenches were where, which units held them. I gather that Pablo managed to run a bit further up after his line was overrun, made it to the top before he was subdued and taken prisoner. Good for him, I suppose—there were rough moments that night, especially when Newland stormed his trench and lobbed a grenade in before finishing the rest.

I’d imagined what I’d do, of course. I’d been in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and a few other places, but this was different. All that had been training. I’d pictured myself performing, doing my job. Then, that night, I got shot before the first trench was even cleared. I could only hear the noise and the shouting up ahead. I was dazed, half gone with the pain.

I didn’t imagine much that night, but I remember in the days after—especially sailing home on the Uganda—thinking about my mates who made it to the top, and about the other hills, Longdon, Tumbledown, all of them. What they’d done, what they’d seen. It’s a strange thing to think about.

*

Then home, and all the rest of it—the knee, the pension, the medical board. Could I work, could I not? Should Deborah and I move out of our wee house on Skye or rent it out? All the practical stuff. I don’t think I thought about the fighting itself again until years later—amazingly enough, maybe not until I got sober.

Things had gone bad by then. Deborah moved out in ’95 and took Caroline with her. When she left, she said quietly, “I’m afraid you’re going to die, but I can’t do anything about it.”

I remember thinking, what kind of sympathy is that? Because I felt I hadn’t had enough of it from her in years—as pathetic as that sounds. Drink makes you pathetic. It strips away the armour you thought made you a man—assertive, steady, capable. All that rubbish you cling to when everything else is falling apart.

I was already a wounded cripple, a man who couldn’t keep steady work, struggling to feed his family. There was Timothy, my boy from my first marriage to Clarissa—that fell apart in the early seventies. His mum was in and out of hospital with her own demons. When that family fell apart, I threw myself into the next one—met Deborah in New York in ’78, married her, had Caroline the next year—but that one went to pieces too. Just one long string of collapses, really.

*

I remember training Marines in the States in the late seventies—that’s where I met Deborah, in New York, on a weekend off. Another story entirely. But I used to talk to those young lads about the psychology of war—the act of killing, and how to live with it. I’d done it in Northern Ireland, and I wasn’t afraid to do it again if it was in the line of duty. It was a job. Sounds callous, but you can’t be a soldier and think too long about such things. Someone shoots at you; you return fire. You do what you have to do.

That’s what I told them. And they always thought they knew what war would be like—until they didn’t. Nobody does, not until you’re in the fire.

Later, after Deborah left—thirteen years after the Falklands—I started thinking about it all again. I realised I’d become everything I’d warned those young men not to become. I’d fallen apart. Not all at once, but bit by bit. My career was gone. I couldn’t do my job anymore. There wasn’t much talk of PTSD then. I suppose I’ve more of that from Northern Ireland than from the Falklands, even though the Falklands were brutal enough.

Still, that war felt different—more like what we were trained for. I don’t know if you’d call it a clean war, but it felt clean, even if it was cruel. Some of it was terrible—the trench Newland overran, the losses at Goose Green, the Belgrano, the Sheffield. All of it sits with you. But that’s war.

What really broke me was that I hadn’t been part of it—not properly. I hadn’t finished what I trained for. Getting shot wasn’t my fault; I was doing my job. But that single moment ended everything that came after. It made the rest of my life something I didn’t recognise.

*

And so the years rolled on. I came home, couldn’t keep a job, and the ball started rolling downhill. You start drinking because there’s nothing else you can do. And even years later—like after that turning point in ’95—you look back and try to reconstruct it all. Not because it changes anything. If it had gone differently, it would’ve been different, aye, but that’s obvious. It’s just that you can’t stop yourself.

I might have killed Pablo that night, and back then it wouldn’t have meant a thing to me. Now, the thought of it makes me sick. But it’s not just that—it’s everything around that moment you start dissecting and replaying, like a fool trying to solve something that can’t be solved.

You get wounded, or you get killed, or you survive and carry on. I survived, but I didn’t carry on. My life stopped there.

Maybe that’s why the mind gets stuck on the details—the way the light hit the slope, the sound of the wind, the smell of cordite. Just those two days. I barely remember Mount Kent or the scrape we had there with the Argentines who were supposed to be gone but weren’t. That was messy, but it fades. The night on this mountain doesn’t.

Every tiny detail. And then, when I got sober in the late nineties, I tried to throw it all away.

Now I’m standing on it again, and it’s all coming back. My mind starts up like an old engine, grinding through every memory—where was this unit, where was that one—none of it matters, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Talking about it with Pablo as if it’s interesting, when really it’s just something to fill the silence, something to keep from feeling too much.

I can’t explain it. Lord knows, I’m not doing well just now. I’m really not.

*

Alright.

We keep climbing, and it’s hard going—not just for the body, but for everything that comes up inside. I’d planned that it wouldn’t. I’d planned to be calm, detached, in control. But here I am, a tottering old fool, the same mess I’ve always been. Too bloody emotional.

Still, I hide it. I have to. Caroline mustn’t see me like this, and Pablo—well, he can’t see it either. So I talk. I keep talking to him, keep the focus somewhere else, though it’s hard, because what we’re talking about is exactly what I’m trying not to feel—the trenches, the rocks, who was where, which bullet came from which side, when that grenade went off. We’re piecing together a story, trying to find some order in the fog of war.

I ask him questions, and Caroline translates. That helps—gives her something to do, keeps her from asking me anything. I ask what he remembers before he was taken prisoner, pretending I’m curious, pretending I’m not really the one with gaps in the story. And maybe I am interested, a bit. But another part of me just wants away from here.

The trouble is, when I think of Pablo, some old feelings start to rise. Pablo did his duty. He was just a lad from some poor province—I can’t even remember the name. Drafted, trained as a sniper, thrown into a fight he could never win. He did what he could, fought well enough until the line broke and he was taken. There’s honour in that, aye. And for many Argentines we met later in Buenos Aires—folk Pablo introduced me to—there’s a strange kind of honour in having lost to a stronger enemy.

But where was the honour in getting your leg blown off before you’d even engaged the enemy?

That’s a thought I need to shut down quick, because it’s poison.

*

So I steer the talk back to the trenches. We mention Newland again, how he cleared that trench with a grenade and killed everyone in it. Pablo knew one of the lads who died there. We talk about that, and I find myself wondering—could that have been me, if things had gone differently? And aye, it could. I’d have been fine with it then. It would have been just another night’s work.

There’s that story about Newland—someone fired at him, and he fired back. Took a hit himself, lost the use of his legs for a while. He healed later, but that night he was half mad with pain and fury. He emptied his magazine into the body, fifteen rounds just to make sure. He told that story more than once after.

And that could have been me.

I tell myself he did the right thing. You do what you have to do. There’s no morality in it, only survival. But then there’s this strange twist in my thinking—that none of this, not Pablo’s life or mine, would have happened the way it did if that night had gone differently. If I’d made it to the top and done what I was trained to do. Maybe I’d have stayed married. Maybe everything that followed would have held together. That’s what I’ve believed for years.

But is that true? If I was too weak to live crippled, would I really have been strong enough later, if something else had gone wrong—a car crash, another injury, anything? Maybe that weakness was always there.

Maybe it started long before, with Clarissa and Timothy, when I left them. Maybe it’s not about war at all. I don’t know. I’m always looking for answers, but I’m not sure there are any.

*

Still, for a wee while I can almost let it rest. We sit in the trench, the wind cutting through us, and I feel almost calm. Caroline finishes translating the last bit, and I think, right, that’s enough. We’ll head back to the Land Rover, get down to Stanley, have a coffee, and that’ll be that. But if I’m so calm, why am I thinking it would be a relief if it were over?

Pablo stands there looking round like a philosopher, breathing the air as if he could stay here forever. I ask what he’s thinking. He says, through Caroline, “It’s important. I’ve dreamt about this place for years. Now that I’m here, maybe for the first and only time since 1982, I need to feel it—to know that it’s finished. Do you understand?”

I tell him yes, though I’m not sure I do. Maybe it’s just his poetic streak—he’s a schoolteacher after all.

I sit down. My leg’s hurting again, and there’s that familiar unease creeping up. It feels like the old days, when I’d gone a while without a drink. I wish I had one now, but there’s only water in the flask. So I tell myself: right, just a bit longer, then we’ll head down.

*

But my mind keeps going. I see it all again—men under fire, panicked, emptying their rifles, not thinking, just surviving. That could have been me. Then my thoughts jump to Timothy, to what happened in Afghanistan in 2003—the ambush, his unit firing into that village, all those civilians. The inquiry cleared them, said it was confusion, Taliban mixed in with villagers. Maybe. Timothy believed it. Or said he did. A month later he stepped on a mine. Sometimes I think he knew the inquiry was rubbish, that they’d covered it up. Sometimes I think that’s why he wasn’t careful enough.

Would I have done the same? I tell myself no. I’d have been calm, professional. But then I think—maybe I’m lying to myself. I used to say there was something wrong with Timothy. But why did I let him go? He was a grown man, aye, but still my son.

In the end, maybe that’s the truth of it—we never really know how we’ll act under pressure. We carry these images of ourselves, but they don’t hold up. Out here, uniforms or not, it’s all movement and instinct. You see something, you shoot, you live with it.

Folk say both sides behaved nobly, that there was mutual respect. Maybe sometimes. But not always. I’m not sure it was ever as noble as the stories say.

*

And that’s the thing—I’d hoped coming here would rebuild something in me. That I’d climb this hill, face the ghosts, and come down whole again, like the man I used to be—the man from Northern Ireland, before all this. But I can’t. There are too many thoughts, too many broken bits of the story.

Folk talk about letting go—as if that’s a single act, something you can just do. What is it we’re meant to let go of, anyway? PTSD? I never thought I had that, not from this. What I can’t let go of is the image of myself as the man who should have done better—not just here, but in the twenty years that followed. I should have treated my family better. I should have treated myself better. It all started here.

And still I think, maybe I can start over. That’s the lie I’ve told myself again and again—if only I do this, I can start again, build the man I meant to be. I thought this trip might be that new start, same as I did when I first went to AA, when I thought I’d finally sorted myself.

But sitting here, feeling the wind in my face, I know it’s not coming. I’m not sure I even want it anymore. I’m just tired. Bone tired.

*

I talk a bit more with Pablo. Caroline asks questions, trying to smooth the awkwardness. I mumble answers. I start talking nonsense—what if I’d been up here that night, what if I’d shot him? But it’s not about that, not really. If it were, it would almost be easier.

And then I can’t hold it in any longer. Last stand, and I fail again. Fail at control, fail at composure. My daughter has to take my arm, guide me down the hill. Rain’s coming in. Everything’s slick and grey.

We’ve resolved nothing. I feel hollowed out, raw. Truth is, it might have been better if we’d never come at all. And that’s a terrible thought to have.

Maybe there’s no control to be found here. No foundations. No explanations that will ever make sense.

All I can do is take my daughter’s hand and let her guide me down the marked path, past abandoned razor blade packages and whatever mines they still haven’t cleared.