Mothers at arms

Published on Tuesday 5 August 2008 09:13

Casualties of the Iraq war are being given a voice by two new pieces of verbatim theatre at the Fringe this year. Jackie McGlone hears the real stories behind Motherland and In Conflict

THE moment Pat Long mentions her dead son Paul's name, she begins to weep. "I am so sorry," she apologises. "It's been five years, but I honestly think I am only just beginning to grieve." Twenty-four-year-old Paul was one of six military policemen cornered and killed by a 500-strong mob at a police station in the southern Iraq town of Majar al-Kabir, in June, 2003.

"My son was murdered in cold blood," exclaims his 56-year-old mother. "He saw his five friends killed; then he was shot twice in the head, three bullets in the neck and four in the chest. They told me he died instantly, but I don't know who or what to believe. I'm still trying to get the army to answer questions."

Even the 2006 inquest into the deaths of the six Redcaps, in which a coroner ruled that the soldiers should have been better equipped, has not brought peace of mind. "Far from it," she says. "To know that your boy died because the army did not give him sufficient ammunition or provide an adequate satellite link to call for back-up is unbearable, the ultimate insult to the memory of a brave young man risking his life for his country. I blame myself.

"Our Paul always wanted to be a policeman, to join the Metropolitan police. But I said it was too dangerous, the way things are now on the streets, so why didn't he join the Royal Military Police? I honestly thought he'd be safer in the army. I'll never forgive myself."

Pat Long has travelled from her South Shields home to meet me at Newcastle's Live Theatre to talk about a warm, heartfelt piece of verbatim theatre, Motherland, which the company has brought to the Edinburgh Fringe. Her story is one of several featured in the production, written and directed by Steve Gilroy, in which North-East women – the mothers, sisters, wives and girl-friends of British military personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq – describe what happens to working-class families when wars in faraway lands invade their lives and homes.

This happened to Janice Murray in her Sunderland living-room at noon on Sunday 21 January 2007. The TV was on because, after her son, Michael Tench, was posted to Iraq in 2006, she'd been permanently glued to news bulletins, worrying about her boy and despairing at the deaths of so many innocent Iraqi people.

Still, she consoled herself that Michael had body armour, that he was in an armoured vehicle. "He's safe; he won't be killed in the heaviest armoured warrior trooper out there, I thought," she tells me.

She had just read a Sky News caption announcing the death of yet another British soldier in Iraq. "I thought, somebody's going to have a nasty shock today," she recalls. Then her husband Derek, Michael's stepfather, said two women he didn't know were coming to their door. "I was still in my jamas – the ones Michael gave me for Christmas," she says. "The women came in and I pointed to the TV, saying how awful the news was; then one of them said, 'I'm here to tell you … that it's your son."

The 18-year-old private had been killed by a roadside bomb, the youngest British soldier to be killed in Iraq.

A strong woman, Murray, 46, is humbling to meet. Her son's death has left her with countless unanswered questions and, like Pat Long, she has channelled all her sorrow and rage into trying to find answers. Both women are campaigning in different ways, and see Motherland as part of that protest. "We want the truth to be told," she says.

She tells a shocking story of blunders by the authorities. Initially she was told her son's body was intact, that he had a chest wound. A few days later she was told he had lost his left leg, then that his left arm was missing. "We discovered that the arm and the leg they had stitched on to him had not been DNA tested," she explains. "On 2 February, the day he was buried, they said that all that was left was (from) the waist up in half, one right arm and a face.

It was October before I found out the extent of his injuries, that he had taken the full impact of the bomb. I've been lied to all the way down the line. It just went on and on. I had to give up my job – I've been a carer for old people for 29 years. I tried working in a supermarket, but I felt so vulnerable. Now I'm caring for my 20-year-old daughter Stacey's two children. Her brother's death has devastated her.

"All I got in the inquest was an apology; I don't want apologies. This is a kid's life. He was just a boy," she says, fingering her gold pendant imprinted with Michael's face. "I loaned my son to them to do a job. I didn't say they could keep him."

Following Murray's vocal campaign, the army has changed its policy on procedure in the event of a soldier's death. "I was pleased, very pleased, because no family should have to suffer the ten months of agony we went through, although I've lots of questions still. I want to say to politicians, come and see the families. Come and see what we do with our lives now. Mine's totally stolen." Then she puts her arms around Long, comforting her friend who has waged a five-year campaign to change the rules about how next of kin are informed of a death.

Long was returning from a day out in Cullercoats with her wheelchair-using mother. She was alone on the bus when her phone rang. It was her daughter-in-law, Gemma. "She asked if I'd heard from the army. I said, 'Are you trying to tell me my son's dead?' He'd been killed while I was sitting with me mam, talking about his birthday.

"I wasn't told straight away because I wasn't listed as next of kin. That's what I'm fighting for, that parents get to know at the same time. You carry your child for nine months, so the mother should be told, not just the wife."

While Motherland focuses on the families of the dead, another play at the Fringe this year, In Conflict, describes what happens to survivors after they return home. Men such as Herold Noel, an army private who has tried to commit suicide twice since ending up homeless after returning from Iraq, or women such as Major Ladda Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs when the air assault helicopter she was flying was shot down.

In Conflict is based on a book by former New York Daily News reporter Yvonne Latty, a collection of revelatory interviews with Iraq war veterans. Staged by theatre students from Temple University, Philadelphia, under the direction of senior lecturer Doug Wager, it brings the voices of war to poignant life. Many of the youthful performers are the same age as the men and women whose words they use, and based their performances on the honest, raw, authentic audio tapes of Latty's interviews.

The Bronx-born writer, now a professor of journalism at New York University, quotes Herold Noel's story when we meet in her Greenwich Village office. He told her: "I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. I did that while I was living out of my car. I couldn't provide for my family. I expected to come back from Iraq as a hero, not a zero. I don't think anybody cares."

Major Duckworth told Latty: "I am not going to dishonour the effort in saving my life by saying, woe is me, I got no legs. Well, I got one knee. There are guys who have none, guys who are blind. I have my arms, my face, my brain." She went on to say: "The alternative to this is death."

The major is desperate to get back in the cockpit, Latty says, quoting her once again. "If I decided to stop flying, it's because I decided to stop, not because an insurgent decided." Noel, she says, speaks of the recurring nightmares he suffers after shooting an Iraqi woman holding a baby, thinking that it was something that it wasn't – a bomb.

Latty and Wager hope that In Conflict will achieve something positive out of such horror. Long and Murray and all the other women involved in Motherland echo that sentiment. "Our children went out there to fight a war based on lies, an unjust war for political ends," says Long. "It wasn't just Paul that died that day. Part of me died."

&#149 Motherland is at the Underbelly, at 7:05pm, until 24 August. In Conflict is at Assembly @ George Street, 12:15pm, until 25 August.