on the faces of four grown men!’ I like to think of him sitting eating the lollies – bought in a little shop in Newcastle – with his mates in the dust of Afghanistan.
He always said the parcels were a massive boost to morale and there was always huge excitement when the post arrived – it didn’t matter whose post. The contents of letters and parcels were always likely to be a source of comfort, amusement, relief, joy and sometimes ridicule from their mates. Kenneth’s parcels always had to have that extra something – for the dog. Non-melting, of course.
After that I was much more careful about wrapping each item before adding them to his parcels. Sending things when he was based in Northern Ireland had been much easier – searing heat was never likely to be a problem there, although drowning would have been no surprise as every letter and phone call featured a rain report. From March to April 2008, almost every letter from Kenneth featured the weather, but it was all about heat and dust, rain and sand.
At first the sunshine was a novelty and there were plenty of ‘no time to sunbathe’ jokes and tales of sunscreen shortages. Kenneth liked the sun and he had inherited my olive skin but the Afghan heat was too intense even for him. Soon it began to affect everything from his sleep to his general morale. By the end of April he was wishing for snow and when the rain came he wanted it to go away. Kenneth was never shy of a good moan, and I’m sure his Army mates were used to it, too, but once he had said his piece he admitted he felt better: ‘rant over’.
Kenneth worried about Diesel, too. He always told us how well his dog was working, but shelter and rest were important and Kenneth’s Bergen was always packed with food, treats and a blanket for Diesel. Whatever the weather had to offer, Diesel would be OK. If Kenneth had to dig in for shelter he dug a man-and-Labrador-sized hole. If there were sandbags to protect the hole from the rain Kenneth explained how he had extended the sandbag wall to protect his dog, too. That dog was his mate as much as any other soldier there.
Plans for his deployment out of Kandahar Airfield (KAF) in mid-April had been held back so the days waiting meant more time to write letters home. I loved getting the extra letters but I didn’t like hearing Kenneth’s frustration. ‘That work I mentioned has been postponed for now so I’m still in KAF living the dream! … How’s life back in Newcastle?’ If the letters weren’t very short, they were very long and full of detailed questions about his dog at home, ‘K’, and the welfare of Trevor his tortoise and how his dad was getting on with setting up the vivarium. I couldn’t help smiling as I read his ramblings. Maybe there was a little bit of guilt in there for leaving us with his pets to care for (but we had always done that) or it was all about stringing out that connection – for as long as he could stay awake to write it all down. It was funny and lovely and I just wanted to reach out and give him a massive hug.
Getting a letter like that said one thing to me: he needed cheering up. He was going to miss his sister Stephanie’s 21st birthday meal so I decided we would take a bluey and a pen with us and pass it around the table so every member of the family could add a message to Kenneth – as if he had been there with us. He loved it! In the best way we could we managed to get Kenneth at that table, and just imagining the food was enough for him. It was as if living on ration packs had caused him to hallucinate about his grandma’s Chinese chicken curry, mince and dumplings and his favourite roast dinners. If I could have sent him a doggy bag I would have done it that night. Instead I wrote: ‘We missed you, son,’ knowing that he was missing us too.
Kenneth had just become a father too, to baby Hannah. He was so happy about the baby and desperate to see the little one, who was born just after he went on tour. It wasn’t an easy situation with Kenneth so far away and I know Hannah was on his mind all the time. From the moment she was born she was in his letters. He was a father and he wanted to get home to see her, but he was also a dedicated dog soldier with a job to do.
For him, that April seemed to involve a lot of waiting and then waiting some more – for the ‘push’, as he described it. He told us the little he could about the scheduled briefings and particularly the training sessions which he loved and kept the dogs at the top of their game. Kenneth was pleased with Diesel and could see his potential, which was why he was eager to get the dog out on the ground. He was desperate to get the camera so he could send us photos of Diesel, his mate, going through his paces. I could sense his restlessness and the boredom in waiting for something to happen, but for us at home there was a greater distraction – the fear that something could happen to him.
From the time the conflict began in 2001 there was always enough on the TV to enable families back home to build a pretty clear picture of the hostility that faced our sons and daughters in Afghanistan. My son was out there, and that brought the war onto our doorstep, and in our own way we were living it, too, but it was no dream. And for Kenneth, home became much more than just where he lived.
Looking back it’s amazing how quickly his being away became part of our daily lives. It was a good job that his sisters understood and were never jealous, because in a sense Kenneth was still with us – making us laugh, making us mad and making us run around him, all the while, unintentionally, being the centre of attention. Through his phone calls home and his letters, Kenneth, the cheeky chap, the joker in the Rowe pack, was as close to us as he could be for a dog soldier in Afghanistan.
He might not have been with me in person, and maybe he was too far away for me to ‘read’ (he always said I was a witch because I could always read his mind – he knew he could never hide anything from me), but his moods and concerns were right there in his blueys. The salutation was usually enough to set the mood – Hello Mam, Hi Parents, Olla Mamma, Howdy Mother – and hinted that he was upbeat and excited about something. I was always wary when I got a Hi Mam or just Hi. When that happened I prepared myself for a letter that was going to be along the lines of one of our late-night chats we had at home – the kind of conversation that started when no one else was around. We’d make a cup of tea and then he would tell me what was making him angry or sad, ask me for advice or just talk and reach conclusions himself. I would hold him and tell him it was all going to be OK and he must not worry.
We could still do that in a letter and my heart would pound when I read his sign-off: ‘Cheers, Mam, you’re a star as always. I couldn’t survive without you by my side every step of the way. All my love as always. Ken xxx and Diesel xxx’
We realised later that after he called and spoke to his dad on Thursday evening his plans to come home must have changed. I was still on my journey back from Carlisle when he called to tell Ken that he would be back at Bastion later. He must still have been at FOB Inkerman at that stage so it must have been after that that he asked to stay the extra day with the men of 2 Para. He found out that his replacement wasn’t due out right away, which would have left the troops without a bomb dog and handler for 24 hours. Kenneth wouldn’t have wanted that, so I understood why he volunteered to stay behind. And, knowing Kenneth as I do, I believe that he would have insisted he stayed.
He was killed just hours later.
I have a lot of ‘blanks’ from that time. I could blame the pills but the result is still the same – I feel ashamed. It’s awful. I have gaps and I want to fill them but the memories are so fragmented: I start to remember and then I hit a blank. Then I feel I know something but then … blank. I want it all back – the lost time. I often wonder, did I take too many pills to block out the pain?
Few people expected to be made welcome over the next couple of days and I’m sure that included visits from the military, but out of everyone we needed to see they were the people who could tell us what happened to Kenneth and what would happen next. I really needed to know.
The next day brought Major Chris Ham (now Lieutenant Colonel retired) and Staff Sergeant Iain Carnegie (now Captain Carnegie with the Australian Army) to the door. I’m sure we were everything they expected us to be, but we couldn’t be anything else. Both knew Kenneth well and had served with him.
I wanted to hear that he was well liked and good at his job. I heard that Kenneth was all of that and more and that he would be sadly missed by everyone he had ever served with. And that he loved his family very, very much.
Iain and Chris were