So when he got home from hospital I used my nursing skills to help with the physio. I arranged private physio, acupuncture and massage for him, and then worked with him on the exercises.
He got back out there for the last six weeks of the tour. It was important to him. In a funny way, I was happy to see him go because it meant so much to him. He says it was down to me that he recovered well enough in time. ‘You fixed me,’ he says. He was elated to have qualified for the tour medal, and that feeling helped him get over the tour better than usual, although it was still a difficult time.
That was my worst experience as a military wife. Looking back, I was so green when I first met Andrew, a few years earlier. I had no idea what it was all about. It all started with a kiss at the end of a party. The town I come from, Watford, has no military connections and I didn’t have a clue about life in the forces; I didn’t know anyone who was serving. But I’m a big believer in fate, and I’m sure fate had a hand in bringing me and Andrew (who is known as ‘Catch’ to all his mates) together.
I was 18 and training to be a nurse when a friend persuaded me to go to a 21st birthday party. She planned to set me up with a local lad. I was feeling ill, with raging tonsillitis, and I nearly didn’t go. I wasn’t attracted to my blind date, and to be honest I didn’t feel well and didn’t want to be there, so I was trying to make my excuses to get home to bed when Andrew arrived late at the party, after returning home from a posting in Brunei.
He nearly didn’t go that night, and I nearly left just before he arrived. We almost didn’t meet.
A couple of months after we started going out, he went on a three-month tour of the Mediterranean, sailing to France, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Egypt. I learnt he was going from one of his mates. He was so casual about it, and I was distraught. I bought a big map and put it on the wall of my bedroom, and I cut out a little paper ship, which I moved about with pins, following his route. I sobbed all the time, saying to Mum, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ and playing our song, ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’ by Eternal, over and over. I had a wall-chart calendar and I was crossing the days off with a big red pen. The only thing I did was go to university; the rest of the time I was in my bedroom, being miserable.
Mum said, ‘You’ll have to toughen up. You have to live your own life when he’s away.’
I wailed, ‘But I don’t want to …’
And he wasn’t even anywhere dangerous! I really dragged it out. Now I’d just be glad he was going somewhere safe.
Early on, he gave me a catchphrase that covers everything that military life throws at us: ‘It’s life in a green suit, babes, life in a green suit.’ It covers all the problems his job brings with it, and if ever I say anything about his life my family repeat it back to me. I’ve learnt to accept it.
I fell in love with the man, and he is the job. It’s his life. It runs through his blood, and he is the man I love. For the first three years we were together I stayed at home in Watford, doing my training, and we saw each other whenever we could.
When he was away I used to go out with friends, but I always felt like a gooseberry because they had their boyfriends with them. Someone would ask me how long it was since I’d seen him and that would set me off. ‘It’s been 70 days, 8 hours …’ – even down to the minutes. It was like a digital clock in my head.
I’m a Cinderella nut so we had a huge Cinderella-themed wedding, complete with glass coach and glass slippers, and he was my Prince Charming, in uniform. Afterwards we moved together to Portsmouth, to a top-floor flat on a military patch.
My family couldn’t believe I was the one who moved away: I’m such a home bird. I know it doesn’t sound far, Watford to Portsmouth, but for me then it seemed a long way. Where I grew up I had my mum and dad and little sister, my big sister and her husband round the corner, my nan and my aunties and all my school and nursing friends nearby, and Andrew’s family not far away – I felt I was going to the other end of the country. It was a really big wrench.
At first we were welcomed by the neighbours. But as soon as Andrew put his marine uniform on they ignored us. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t understand – and I still can’t – why there are rivalries between different branches of the armed forces. A bit of friendly rivalry is one thing, but we heard about social things that we weren’t invited to, and that really hurt.
Most of those around us were naval people. I’d no idea a uniform could make such a difference. I was used to people being friendly; I’m a friendly person myself. Now I’d be tougher. My attitude is: I’m Katherine, I’m not a rank or a number. Or I’d mentally just say, ‘Stuff you.’ Luckily I had my job – I was doing a midwifery course in Southampton – and we made friends through that.
We moved to a house in Taunton a week before Andrew deployed for Iraq, and I unpacked the boxes while he went through his joining routine. I knew nobody. I didn’t even know where Tesco was. Luckily, the following week I started work, which helped me cope with him going somewhere dangerous for the first time since we’d met. It was a steep learning curve: a new town, a new home and all the worries of him being in a war zone. Once I got sorted it was, socially, a much better posting, and for the first time I made really good friends with women who were in the same boat, with their men out there too. It was my first taste of how supportive and strong a group of military wives can be.
It was meant to be a three-month tour, but it was extended several times, and he ended up serving seven and a half months out there. That was difficult to deal with. When he got home, he had changed, mainly because it was his first dangerous posting since we’d been together.
I’d always said I wanted children one day, but he had said he wasn’t ready. His parents had split up, and he was very conscious of not wanting to repeat that pattern. He’s a big softie to me, but at work he’s a textbook marine: he eats, sleeps and breathes it. It took him a few weeks to get over that tour, to come home mentally. Then, one night in bed, he told me that he’d never thought he could miss someone as much as he had missed me when he was away. For a moment I was a bit insulted: we’d been married three or four years by then, and I’d known before he went how much I would miss him.
He said, ‘I’m not very good at explaining things, but I never thought I could love you more than I already did. I never thought it could hurt as much as it did, missing you. You were the part of me I couldn’t get away from.’
He was so serious that I made a little tent out of the bedclothes and used my phone for a light to see his face.
Then he said: ‘I want us to have children. I’m ready. I realised out there, missing you so much that it was a pain in the pit of my stomach, that it doesn’t matter about anyone else. You and me are what we are. When I’m over this tour, back to being the normal me, I’d like to try for a baby.’
I was jubilant. It was a magic moment. We waited a couple of months, because I knew he needed time to recover, and then our son Freddie was born the following year.
People don’t realise that a six- or seven-month tour lasts, for us, for over a year. For six months before they go they are training hard; then when they come back they have to readjust, which also takes time. It’s hard. During the training it’s a real struggle for me: half of me wants to know what he’s preparing for; the other half wants to blank it out. He has the ability to shut off: I don’t know whether that’s his personality or whether it is something he has been trained to do. But I feel he has to stay open in order to stay close to me, and we are better at it now than we were. But I have to face the fact that, as the training goes on, in his head he is more and more out there.
I’m glad he is so well prepared, mentally and emotionally. But that doesn’t make it easier for me. It makes for a high-pressure marriage. The pre-training is very intense. In his first tour of Afghan he was in a specialist team, and it was important that they became a tight team before they left. There was no gentle progression: he was deep in it from the start of training. I tried to talk to him as