Yesterday I bumped into my friend Bill. We often cross paths in our favourite coffee haunt sharing a love of decent coffee and talking endlessly about food - a lovely topic for conversation with much to both agree and disagree about. Bill won't mind me describing him as a giant of a man, I am sure, as he stands at about 6'10" which is, I'm sure you will agree, pretty tall. Bill is an ex-service man and yesterday showed me some pictures of him proudly standing guard outside Buckingham Palace wearing a Bearskin. Apparently he was a little over 8 foot tall with the bearskin on! He served mainly with the Scots Guards.
I noticed that he was not quite himself yesterday and being a pretty direct sort of person I ventured,
"Whats up Bill? You seem a little sad today" He replied that it was a bad time of the year for him. I realised it must be an anniversary of some kind and asked if it was someone special that he was remembering. He hesitated and I apologised and said how tactless I must seem, perhaps we should talk about food again. He replied that no, it was alright, he felt comfortable talking to me.
He started to talk in a soft Scottish burr, he is a giant but the phrase 'Gentle Giant' could easily have been tailor made for Bill, "Tomorrow (today) is the anniversary of the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram being fired upon in Bluff Cove during the Falklands conflict."
His eyes are down and he is making no movement apart from the constant rubbing of his fingers with his thumbs. I feel the need to fill the silence; "Were you on one of the ships?"
"No - I was about 300 metres away and watched in impotent horror"
"That must have been very traumatic for you" I venture.
"You can't imagine it - The noise, then the silence as you are deafened by the noise, the chaos, the smoke, then the noise comes back, the screaming, the horrific screaming of dying men wanting their mothers. Bodies, bits of bodies, the sea on fire, the smell of fuel. the smell of fuel burning, the smell of bodies burning...."
I need to bring him back to the hear and now I realise as his eyes are watery and his hands are shaking.
"Bill. Bill? Its ok" He looks up at me and the shutters to the pain slowly roll back down. He smiles at me and says, "You probably think I'm stupid" he looks down again.
"No Bill, I think you are an incredibly brave man." I put my hand on his for a moment and give him a smile, and for a brief second we both have a view into each others soul. Then we laugh it off and normality is resumed.
Conversation about food is soon resumed and all is good, but something has has changed. We all need a mask to wear, to hide behind, to keep the demons at bay. Never judge the book by the cover they say and in Bill's case that saying has never been truer. I hope that he doesn't find today to painful alone with his memories, or indeed anyone else who may have been at Bluff Cove on that dreadful day on June 8th 1982.
Our conversation was far more in depth and covered much more ground than I have written here, but I feel that it would be an invasion of privacy to write any more. We need to look after our servicemen. They risk everything for us, sometimes at the whim of stupid politicians as in more recent times (my opinion). Bill survived the Falklands and no less than five tours of Northern Ireland. I'd say that was something he should be allowed to be proud of.
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