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28-6-2003 Scotsman
Home to the babies they've never seen By Gethin Chamberlain Defence Correspondent GWEN Campbell is craning her head, eyes anxiously scanning the faces of the soldiers pouring off the bus. In her arms is a tiny bundle, Finlay, ten weeks old, fast asleep, fingers crammed into his mouth, born while his father Lorne was thousands of miles away, fighting a war in Iraq. Gwen spots him, eyes lighting up, and she is pushing her way through the crowd towards the tanned figure in his desert combats. They meet, kiss, he takes Finlay in his arms, the baby he has never seen, cradles him for the first time. There were times when Gwen feared she would never see this moment. In the first weeks of the war, when she was still heavily pregnant, she would sit up into the early hours of the morning, glued to the television, devouring every snippet of news, every success and every setback. After a while, she stopped, the fear and anguish too much to bear. She waited for Finlay to be born, lay in the hospital bed alone with her new son, envied the mother in the next bed whose husband could share her joy. Terrified that maybe this precious moment they are sharing would never come. Unable even to talk to Lorne on the telephone, she tried to get word to him through the army to let him know he was a father. Lorne, just arrived in Basra, read the news in the print-out of a radio message. "He was ecstatic that the baby was born and that he was all right, but I was heartbroken that he missed it," she says. "We tried to get him home but it was never going to happen." Gwen, 31-years-old, petite and blonde, dressed in a beige top and check skirt, is fighting to control the emotions that her voice betrays. "I have never known fear like that in my life, the thought of Lorne never meeting his son was too awful to think about," she says. "There were things happening every day, British and American soldiers were being killed, it wasn't being morbid any more, it was fact. "In the beginning I was glued to the news. I was staying up to 2am or 3am to the point where I was going to make myself ill. In the end I stopped watching the news and only watched the teatime news. I just hoped that their training prepared them for this." Waiting for Lorne to step off the bus, she is not sure what she will do. "I'm probably going to cry," she says, although she didn't, not at first, not while everyone was watching them. "I can't wait to share our baby with him. I have hated every minute of him being away." Finlay arrived two days early, before those in Basra were given permission to make phone calls home again. Gwen rang the British Forces Broadcasting Service to ask them to put out a message on the radio to let Lorne know he was a father. He missed it, but the battalion managed to get a signal through to let him know the good news. Back in Germany though, the girl from East Calder was on her own. "It was very hard because the lady next to me, her husband was there sharing it, and Lorne could not do that. I just desperately wanted him to be there, but I knew he wouldn't be." Not that Lorne did not try. Before he went away, he recorded himself reading Jack and the Beanstalk. and Gwen played it to the growing bump every day until the birth, and afterwards to Finlay, hoping that he would learn to recognise his father's voice. She lay him on Lorne's T-shirts, hoping that he would learn to recognise the smell of his father. "He did everything he could do," she says. "Before, if something had happened, I would have had nothing to show for 13 years of marriage but now I had something very precious." And now Lorne, 34, a now battle-hardened company sergeant-major from Perth, is cradling the sleeping Finlay in his arms. "I'm not quite sure how I'm feeling," he says. "But it is a good feeling. It's going to take a couple of days to sink in. I know I'm a dad but I haven't done this dad thing." Gwen, smiling madly, is holding on to him, gazing at the new father and his child. "My world has been upside down," she says. "I'm just looking forward to having him to myself for a while." All over the parade ground, the scenes are repeated. Six babies have been born to fathers who, until this moment, have never seen their children. For many of those stepping off the buses, it had been their first taste of combat. Those waiting for them wondered if the soldiers with whom they were about to be reunited would be the same men who left so many months ago. The plane bringing them back from Iraq had landed only an hour earlier. The white and blue Boeing 747 taxied slowly to a halt on the apron at Hanover airport. Steps were pushed forward, two pipers began to play and finally the doors, front and centre, swung open. As the men of the 1st Battalion Black Watch stepped out into the sunshine of a German afternoon the smiles and the looks on their faces said everything that needed to be said. It was finally over. Young men, many of whom had never fought in a war before, or fired a bullet in anger, simply relieved to have made it through to the end. At times it had felt as if the whole world was against them, wanted them dead. Then came the peacekeeping, trying to put back together the broken city of Basra, the threat of danger never quite receding. Now it was behind them. All that separated them from those they had left behind was a short drive to the barracks at Fallingbostel. In the arrivals hall, words from the brigadier, Paul Gibson, who had flown in by helicopter to greet them. They had fought professionally and had upheld the very highest standards of the Black Watch. Their reputation was second to none, he told them. Well done. In the bus back to the barracks, barely an hour away, they gazed out of the windows at the scenery, unfamiliar in recent months. Grass, trees, fields of grain, so very different to the dusty streets of Basra and the barren, sun-baked wasteland that surrounded it. And then they were driving through the gates of the barracks with its white and ochre buildings and red roofs, the children's swings and toys standing on the tidy lawns. Banners were hung from windows and there, in front of them, a small marquee set out beside the parade ground, and wives and girlfriends and children all waiting excitedly to catch the first glimpse of the men they had waited so long to see again. The children held balloons and flags, a couple of Warrior armoured vehicles stood on the parade ground, painted not in the desert camouflage but in the more familiar green and black. As each man alighted from his bus, he scanned the crowd for a familiar face. There were hugs, kisses, children jumping up excitedly to greet their fathers. Those with no-one to meet them grabbed a can of beer from the stack in front of the open-sided marquee. Among the fathers clutching new-born children, Jim Mathieson, a 31-year-old sergeant from Arbroath. In his arms, Aird, two weeks old. He had come home for the birth, but had to go back again straight afterwards, leaving wife Margaret to look after the baby. "It's good to be home for good," he says. "I've got a month before leave, getting my life sorted out." Getting used to life away from the fighting had been the hard part, he said. "It was a bit strange going from war fighting to peace - one moment we were trying to kill each other, the next we were trying to save them. I don't think any other army in the world could have done it." To make life more comfortable, they chipped in their own cash, buying a television, DVD, fridges and freezers to make their temporary Basra home more liveable. Captain Justin Prowse, 26, was just looking forward to seeing his fiancee, Emma Stephenson, 26, and enjoying a little dose of normality. The couple are due to marry next month.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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