Ever wondered what it is like to support a loved one in the armed forces? Army wife and journalist Kitty Dimbleby reveals stories of life, love and loss from the women behind the front line. Meet the girlfriends, mothers, wives and daughters of 2 Royal Welsh Battalion. For every brave soldier putting their life on the line for Queen and country, there is a second, more subtle sort of heroism at work back at base in Britain.
Daffodil Girls is the story of the women behind the soldiers of The 2nd Batallion The Royal Welsh. Granted unprecedented access into this most private of communities, writer Kitty Dimbleby brilliantly brings to life the lot of a soldier’s wife. How do you have a relationship that is not only long-distance, but with someone who is both out of contact and in danger on a daily basis? How do you deal with everyday life, for yourself and your children while he’s away? How do you readjust to your partner’s return, and come to terms with the horrors they might have seen? And how do you cope if your worst nightmare comes true – that he doesn’t come back at all?
Kitty Dimbleby follows these women through the cycle of a regiment’s tour of duty: the preparation for departure, the six long months of action and the emotional reunion.
Insightful, humorous and deeply moving in turn, Daffodil Girls captures the unique bond of friendship and indomitable spirit that is forged in such circumstances – the extraordinary world of the heroines behind our army heroes.
Kitty Dimbleby, 31, has been working as a journalist for 10 years, writing for the Evening Standard, Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. She has also contributed articles to The Times, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan and Metro. In 2007, she reported from Iraq and visited Basra Palace, the former British Army base where she came under heavy mortar fire. In 2008 Kitty followed that particular field assignment with a visit to Afghanistan.
Kitty is passionately involved with the charity Help for Heroes – working for the past year as part of their media team and editing the charity’s quarterly magazine, Heroes. She is married to a captain in the Kings Royal Hussars. They live in the army garrison town of Tidworth, Wiltshire.
The 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh is an armoured infantry battalion based in Tidworth, Wiltshire.
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Introducing The Daffodil Girls
Understanding Army Ranks
PART ONE – PRE-TOUR
Prologue: ‘Knowing he’s going to go’
Chapter 1: ‘I never set out to marry a soldier’
Chapter 2: ‘The place we army couples call home’
Chapter 3: ‘I came across as a lost little girl’
Chapter 4: ‘They’re soldiers, they’d rather be there in the action’
PART TWO – THE TOUR
Chapter 1: ‘The weekends are the worst. The house is tidy – no rugby, no boxing’
Chapter 2: ‘The force behind the forces’
Chapter 3: ‘Love you, miss you. Not a lot happening here. . .’
Chapter 4: ‘My God – our dad’s out there’
Chapter 5: ‘You enjoy R&R, but you can’t relax . . . you know they’re going back’
Chapter 6: ‘Every time it’s on the news, you pray that it’s somebody you don’t know’
Chapter 7: ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
Chapter 8: ‘I wouldn’t have known where to start, to rebuild everything’
PART THREE – POST-TOUR
Chapter 1: ‘That was the hardest bit, watching him being carried in’
Chapter 2: ‘He went through a lot and saw a lot of terrible things . . .’
Epilogue
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
Copyright
While the lives of our soldiers have changed dramatically over the years – the conflict zones they fight in, the enemies they face and the experience of war itself – not much has changed in the life of an army wife. The time drags when they are away – six months feels like six years, the anxiety is crippling, it is terribly lonely and only those who have lived it can really understand what you are going through. I know because I’ve been there; first back in 1981 when my fiancé was on an operational tour of Northern Ireland and then in 2009, when my son was deployed to Helmand in Afghanistan. You have to be as brave, albeit in a different way, as the soldier you love, keeping the life they have left behind running in their absence, while also living with terrible fear – not of a bullet or a mortar, but a knock on the door bringing the news you dread.
Daffodil Girls is the story of the countless unsung heroines of army life: the women who have to sit and wait for their loved ones to return from increasingly dangerous operational tours, all the time desperately trying to keep their darkest thoughts at bay - what if the soldier they love comes back changed, injured or, unbearably, doesn’t come back at all?
In the summer of 2007 my husband Bryn and I met some of those wounded, and their families, and decided we had to do something – Help for Heroes was born. The aim was to provide direct practical support to those injured in the service of our country, and therefore also their families. The message of the charity would be strictly non-political and non-critical, giving people a chance to ‘do their bit’ to show these extraordinary men and women that they are cared about by us, the British public.
Three and a half years on and the response has been phenomenal. The money donated to Help for Heroes (a total of £85m at time of going to print) is used in a huge variety of ways. The first major undertaking was the £8m state-of-the-art gym and swimming pool complex at DMRC (Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre) Headley Court, which opened in June 2010. The next big project will be the Personnel Recovery Centres planned for Edinburgh, Colchester, Catterick, Tidworth and Plymouth. The centres will provide individually tailored care for the wounded, teach them new skills and provide access to comprehensive support, ranging from medical and psychological care, to financial and employment assistance. The intention is to create a ‘one-stop welfare shop’ so army personnel can leave the centres fully prepared to tackle the next stage of their lives, knowing exactly where to go for help if they have problems.
In an initiative close to my heart, because it enables us to directly support the loved ones as well as the serving personnel, in 2010 Help for Heroes launched the Quick Reaction Fund, a £6m fund that provides financial help to wounded individuals and their relatives within 72 hours of receiving a request. The funds, administered by the Services’ own charities, will ensure that individuals and their families can access Help for Heroes aid when it is needed most. For example, if a wounded serviceman needs his home upgraded to enable him to live there and there were no other funds available, the Quick Reaction Fund would pay for the upgrade. Similarly, if a relative has run into financial difficulty as a result of staying at their loved one’s bedside, the Fund can be used to help.
Kitty Dimbleby has been involved with Help for Heroes from day one. When her husband was in Iraq in 2007, she wrote one of the first articles about the new charity and, since becoming an army wife, Kitty has worked full-time as a vital part of our media team. We are truly honoured that she has decided to donate the royalties from Daffodil Girls to Help for Heroes so we can continue our efforts to provide support to our wounded servicemen and women and their families.
As the wife of a soldier, Kitty has struggled with the same sense of separation and anxiety that befalls all army wives. Her unique and very personal insight into the lives of the women married to members of 2 Royal Welsh – a few of whom, I am proud to say, also work with us at Help for Heroes - has produced a story that often had me reaching for the Kleenex, and which reinforces what a tough job it is to be left behind. She has given these women a voice and reminded us that behind every single member of our armed forces fighting on the front line are the wives, girlfriends, mothers and daughters keeping the modern-day home fires burning. These are the heroines behind our heroes.
MY KNOWLEDGE OF the military was pretty limited back in 2005. To be honest, I gave the army little thought, only pausing occasionally at the obituary images in the newspapers of uniformed men and women. Theirs was a world that I knew little about, and one which I believed had no real relevance to my life. Amazing how things change. At the end of that year, when I was twenty-five, I met and fell in love with an army officer, and the shadowy idea I’d had of ‘a soldier’ very quickly became replaced by the flesh-and-blood men with whom I now began to spend time.
Ed comes from a long line of soldiers. When we met, his father and uncle, both colonels in the same regiment, were serving away from home in Kosovo and Turkey. Ed’s grandfather was a decorated World War One hero who died from his injuries before Ed was born. Ed’s military lineage was as long and impressive as my journalistic one and I was fascinated by the world in which he had grown up: boarding school from the age of eight, living on ‘the patch’ – the slang name given to the housing estates for married service personnel which surround military garrisons, moving every two years, his father away frequently – sometimes for seven months at a time. It all seemed impossibly hard to me, so I was deeply impressed by the stoic nature of his mother and grandmother – army wives through and through who had kept the home fires burning, first for their husbands and then their sons.
I resolved to be the model army girlfriend – supportive and uncomplaining. But of course at that time I had no idea how hard this would really be. Through Ed I met other women of my generation – army WAGs we jokingly called ourselves – and soon I had a new group of friends, always on the end of an email or the phone, to support one another through the ups and downs of army WAGdom. I met men and women of all military ranks and from differing backgrounds, their partners and their families – and my understanding and admiration for our armed forces grew and grew.
I was still a journalist, however, and could not help but be fascinated by the stories they told, from day-to-day life in a war zone to the difficult wait back at home. Moved and awed in equal measure, I felt these first-hand accounts painted a far more vivid picture of events in Afghanistan and Iraq – and the consequent fall-out at home for families – than anything I had ever read or seen on the news. This was real life; straight from soldiers’ mouths and from the point of view of those who love them.
In the summer of 2007, when my soldier boyfriend was sent to Iraq, I experienced for myself the agony endured by the thousands of military families whose loved ones are in a war zone. I do not use the word ‘agony’ here lightly, for only those who have lived through it can truly understand the constant worry, and sometime crippling fear, felt by those left behind. The result was that I decided to use my journalism to try to convey the sacrifices made not only by the men and women who go to war, but also by those who wait for them at home. I wrote a major feature for the Mail on Sunday about the ‘e-bluey’ letter-writing system, and also about an internet chat room which the families of serving soldiers, airmen and seamen use to support one another. My personal experience I hope, helped to anchor the stories of these brave, ordinary individuals who keep the home fires burning while their loved ones are at war. For I, too, was now receiving letters and phone calls from my boyfriend, each of which painted a vivid picture of life in the conflict zone. Personally, they gave comfort; professionally, they enthralled me and left me wanting to learn more.
So in August 2007, inspired by a story I had seen on the Ministry of Defence website, I flew to Iraq to meet a group of soldiers and write about their work with a local orphanage. It was a dangerous time to be in Basra and I was the last journalist ever to report from Basra Palace while it was under British control, and we were mortared relentlessly. At the same time, however, I witnessed life out there first-hand; the stoical nature of members of our armed forces, and the dignity and gentle humour with which they conduct themselves. Of course the men and women I met talked about their loved ones back home, about the letters and parcels sent, the phone calls, and about how they try to stop their families worrying. Despite being in a war zone it was clear that those left at home helped to shape the stories of the men and women at war, with news from home having the ability to lift or lower the mood of the toughest of soldiers.
In October 2007 I visited Headley Court, the military rehabilitation centre in Surrey, where I met with injured men and women in order to write the first article about Help For Heroes, a then-new charity which has since gone on to become a household name. Every individual I met – some with shocking injuries – talked more of the bravery, love and support of their family than of their own suffering. This cemented for me the idea that it is the army of people waiting at home that enables our armed forces to do their job.
A year later, in 2008, I became engaged to my own soldier and a week later left him behind for Afghanistan. I travelled throughout the country – from Kabul to Kandahar and to Lashkar Gah – until I reached Camp Bastion, the military base in Helmand province, where I spent four days embedded with the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT). Living, eating and working with the team, which flies day and night across Southern Afghanistan to pick up the injured, was a daunting experience and my respect for these men and women is boundless. At every turn, it seemed, I was confronted with deeply humbling tales of heroism, each told without fuss by people ranging from an eighteen-year-old squaddie to a fifty-two-year-old army surgeon.
Again, it was the stories these people told of home that sparked my imagination. Sitting in a tent with four men while each wrote to their loved ones – well, even the hardest of hearts would have been moved. A captain wrote to his unborn son – asking if he was kicking more and telling him to look after mummy. Apparently he and his wife had agreed this method of letter writing – the realities of his grim life on the front line too much for a pregnant women waiting at home alone. Another captain wrote to his new girlfriend, ‘my darling’, ‘my love’ and told me that writing his daily missive – and her response – got him through the week. A sergeant wrote to his five-year-old – each letter large and well shaped so his little boy, learning to read, could copy his words. ‘It’s hard when you miss the important things,’ he stated, simply.
I decided I wanted to tell the stories of those who are left behind, to tell the story of a tour from the point of view of the families waiting at home. Each fighting their own battle, one where you do not win or lose, just survive until your loved one returns to you. There is an army at home – the grandparents, mothers, girlfriends, wives, husbands, boyfriends, children and friends whose love and support enable our military to do the job asked of them under the most terrible of circumstances. It is the story of those left behind that has to be told and which will, I hope, provide a unique and valuable insight into modern-day warfare and the courage of the most ordinary of people.
The 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh is an armoured infantry battalion based at Tidworth in Wiltshire, the same garrison town as my husband’s regiment, the King’s Royal Hussars. The Royal Welsh was formed on St David’s Day 2006 from two historic line infantry regiments: the 1st Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers and The 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Wales. Since the amalgamation, 2 R Welsh has completed one tour of Iraq and sent companies of 150 men on three tours of Afghanistan (the most recent of which will still not be completed at the time of this book going to print). In this time, six 2 R Welsh soldiers have lost their lives. The battalion has endured one of the most continued periods of fighting of any regiment in the British Army, and as such, was the perfect battalion to follow for this project. I met Amanda and Kirsty, two of the Daffodil Girls – the nickname I have given the women who agreed to be interviewed for this book – at Help for Heroes where they both work and Amanda, a senior Daffodil Girl with huge standing within the battalion wives and soldiers’ community, liked my idea for this book and offered to help. Within days I had a meeting with the commanding officer and a number of wives willing to talk to me. The project, which I had been trying to get off the ground for months, was kick-started within hours by Amanda, proving, undoubtedly, the power of the wives’ club.
I spent much of the summer and autumn of 2010 with the wives of 2 Royal Welsh. Some husbands were away in Afghanistan, others had recently returned; each of the women had unique and remarkable stories to tell. In this book, I have tried to pull together their tales to create the definitive story of an army tour from the wives’ perspective: the preparation, the tour, and the homecoming. The material is drawn from the experiences of recent and current tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have endeavoured to be as current as possible and, at the time of going to print, two of the Daffodil Girls’ husbands, Lee and Ben, are still away, fighting on the front line in Afghanistan.
I must also quantify that I am very aware that the army is only one-third of our wonderful armed forces and that there are countless RAF and British Navy families going through the pain of separation from their loved ones. This book is based on what I know, about being married to a soldier and living in an army community. I also know that there are many brave women who go to war leaving husbands and boyfriends at home to worry, that of course there are also fathers who have a child sent to a war zone, and supportive girlfriends who keep the home fire burning away from the regimental family. This book, however, is about the world I inhabit in Tidworth and the wives’ community, the people who are my neighbours and my friends.
I HAVE CHOSEN to only use first names throughout the book for continuity – most of the women and their husbands were happy to be identified in full but, because there are a few examples where sensitivities meant I would only be referring to the individual by their first name, I decided to take this approach across the whole book.
Amanda, 38, wife of Captain Lee, 41;
two daughters, Megan, 17, and Bethan, 15.
Clare, 32, former soldier, married to the welfare officer, Mo;
two children, Kimberley, seven months, and Ryan, four.
Dereynn, 46, married to Sergeant Taff, 44;
two children, Sian, 24, (now married to her own soldier, Alex,
and has a daughter, Bailey-Mae aged six months), and Gav, 19.
Donna, 21, married to Private Craig, 20;
one son, Bradley, aged three.
Elaine, 30, married to Corporal Pete, 33;
three children, Aaron, 13, Bethany, 11, and Lewis, aged seven.
Julie, 38, married to Captain Dai, 41;
two children, Macaulay, 15, and Morgan, 12.
Kaz, 43, married to Lance Corporal Brian, 28;
one daughter, Megan, 18.
Kirsty, 24, married to Lieutenant Benedict (Ben for short), 25.
Mandy, 37, married to Sergeant Major Ian, 38;
two children, Cerys, 13, and Shaun, 11.
Rhiannon, 35, married to Major Huw, 36.
Sarah, 44, mother of Private James, 21.
Simone, 37, married to Sergeant Major Mark, 39;
two children, Dale, 19, and Brad, 15.
SOLDIERS’ RANKS
Private
Lance Corporal
Corporal
Sergeant
Colour Sergeant
Warrant Officer class 2 (Sergeant Major)
Warrant Officer class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major RSM)
OFFICERS’ RANKS
2nd Lieutenant
Lieutenant
Captain (direct entry or late entry; direct entry meaning some one who has joined the army as an officer, a 2nd Lieutenant, straight from Sandhurst; late entry, someone who has worked their way up through the ranks, becoming a captain after being a WO1)
Major
Lieutenant Colonel
Colonel
Brigadier
Major General
Lieutenant General
General.
IT WAS 3.30AM and still dark when the alarm went off but Kirsty and Ben were already wide-awake. Sitting up in bed, Kirsty watched while her husband of just eight months collected together the last of his belongings and dressed in his combat uniform. The couple were silent – there was too much to be said to even try and start at this late juncture.
Kirsty had been crying sporadically throughout the night. Despite the best intentions to dress up for their goodbye, she had only the energy to pull on some tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, really the most comfortable things to wear over her growing six-month baby bump. Her eyes were so red and sore that she didn’t even bother with her contact lenses and left her hair messed up from the pillow.
This was to be the couple’s first experience of a tour, with Second Lieutenant Benedict not long out of Sandhurst. The couple had married just days before they moved to the patch in Tidworth when Benedict officially joined the battalion. Kirsty had been dreading this separation – not least because the time he would be away would coincide with the arrival of their first child. Mandy had been married to a soldier for fourteen years, but his latest tour, starting just two days before their wedding anniversary, was definitely the hardest good bye. Her eldest child, their daughter Cerys, thirteen, wanted to go with her mum to drop off her dad in camp but Shaun, their son, decided to say his goodbyes in the kitchen at home. Just ten years old at the time, he knew he now had to be the man of the house, so grabbing a bowl of cereal he gave his dad a manly pat on the back, saying ‘See you soon’ before heading up to his room to play on his Playstation.
Donna tried to be really brave when she said goodbye to Craig. She wanted to show her husband how strong she could be so that, during the course of their six-month separation, his mind would be on his job, not worrying about the little family he had left behind. Married for less than a year, they both knew this time was going to be tougher for Donna than the time before. Then, when Private Craig had gone to Iraq, the couple were engaged but Donna was living in Catterick near her family, friends and familiar life.
Now, living on the patch in Tidworth, Donna was far from the supportive network she had enjoyed the previous tour. She knew the girls on the patch would be there for her but she was all too aware that many would be going home to their families. Donna had decided to stay put, not wanting to uproot their three-year-old son any more than necessary – even if that did mean she was in for a lonely six months.
When Amanda had found out a few months previously that her husband Lee was going away for his ninth tour of duty, she had sat at the kitchen table during supper and sobbed. ‘It sounds dramatic,’ she says, ‘but I felt as if we’d been dropped a bombshell – I really didn’t want him to go.’ But the night before Lee left there were no tears; the family watched TV and their eldest daughter Megan, seventeen, fell asleep on the sofa. When she came to say goodnight to her dad she was half-asleep – too dopey to get upset, it was almost like any other bedtime. But that was the last time she would see her dad before he left – the whole family had decided that it was easier for all involved if Lee slipped away in the morning without waking the girls.
Their younger daughter, fifteen-year-old Bethan, stayed up with her parents until past midnight. When Lee left the room for a moment Bethan took the chance to confess to her mum that she couldn’t bear to say goodbye, that she was scared, scared of breaking down in front of her dad, scared about where he was going. Father and daughter hugged goodbye for a long time that night. It was a sleepless one for the couple and their youngest child.
In the run-up to her husband leaving, Elaine couldn’t help but count down the days, then the hours, then the minutes. Corporal Pete was collected from the terraced army quarter at around four o’clock. The couple had got up together, then Elaine busied herself making a cup of tea while Pete gathered the last of his things.
Elaine remembers feeling just horrible, ‘Knowing he’s going to go . . . and he might not come back. I think everyone feels the same’. I went to wave him off on the doorstep, and my neighbour Louise was stood on her doorstep waving her husband off as well. We couldn’t help but smile when we realised we were both stood there in the same pyjamas – three-quarter pink ones with hearts on, from the local Tesco.’
Kirsty and Benedict were still unable to talk as they drove into camp. They played the radio to disguise the oppressive silence between them. Playing was the Europop hit We No Speak Americano. Kirsty remembers thinking how inappropriate it was for the mood of the journey and yet, days later, she was unable to get the annoyingly catchy song out of her mind.
In camp, they parked up by the parade ground, in a quiet spot, for their goodbye. Kirsty waited in the car while Benedict unloaded his kit and took his bags to the army vehicles waiting over the road. When he returned after the third trip, he got back into the car and they shared a hug.
‘I didn’t want to let go,’ says Kirsty. ‘The car handbrake was digging into my bump and it was really uncomfortable but I ignored it. Finally we both got out of the car to swap seats and stood hugging by the driver’s door.
‘I couldn’t really say anything because the worst thoughts were going through my head and I didn’t want my parting words to be something horrible and negative. The night before I wasn’t strong enough and I already felt guilty; I kept saying stupid things, like, “What if this is the last time I see you?” He hates that and I shouldn’t say it. But, as always, he was so good about it and even when he was hugging me, saying goodbye, he was being practical and loving – worrying whether or not I knew my way out of camp because the one-way route had changed since I had last driven it. I loved how concerned he was, but also it really brought home how alone I would now be.’
For Mandy and Cerys, dropping Company Sergeant Major Ian at camp was far more emotional than the farewell shared between father and son. Cerys climbed out of the car with her dad to say goodbye while mum Mandy hung back – letting her daughter have a moment alone.
Then it was Mandy’s turn. ‘We stood by the car and Ian laughed and called me a silly sod when I started to get emotional. We told one another we loved one another and that we would see each other soon. Then he walked off and left us there. His last words to me before he walked away – dressed in his desert combat with his bags slung over his shoulder were “The more you cry, the less you pee” – it wasn’t very romantic, but that’s what he always says to me. It makes me laugh no matter how much I am crying.’
When the time came, Benedict told Kirsty he had to leave. ‘I wanted to cling to him but that would have been too hard, for both of us. I kept telling him to be safe and he promised me he would be. Watching him walk away was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I was crying too much to drive off immediately so I stayed in the car, out of sight, until I felt calm enough to leave.’
Amanda had hoped that saying goodbye to Lee would be slightly easier this time; he wasn’t wearing uniform, having taken it into camp the day before. ‘I’d hoped it would feel less like a tour, that I would be able to temporarily fool myself that he was just popping out, but of course that wasn’t the case.
‘I watched the bus go and I sobbed. It feels wrong to compare it to bereavement – because I’ve lost people close to me – but it is suffocating. You struggle to breathe when they first leave and it’s panic, because you just want them back, but there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Cerys and Mandy drove back home both half-crying and half-laughing at one another for being so soft. Five minutes after they got back, Ian texted to tell Mandy to go look on their bed, where he’d left her a gift and a card. Even though they’d agreed to do nothing for their anniversary both had ignored that, Mandy putting a card in Ian’s bag for him to find when he got to Afghanistan. But, she hadn’t been expecting anything from him.
The gift was a glass paperweight with a red heart, with a little note saying, ‘Please look after my heart while I’m away. We’ll celebrate our next wedding anniversary in more style.’ Ian had also left Cerys a note which read, ‘Look after your brother, and behave. Help your mother out with the housework. Know I always love you, and I’ll ring you as soon as I can.’ ‘So she starting crying,’ Mandy remembers, ‘and I was already crying . . .’
There was still one final message to come from Ian before he left: a text to Mandy as he was about to board his plane at RAF Brize Norton. ‘Love you,’ he wrote, ‘and speak to you soon.’ ‘That was it,’ Mandy remembers thinking. ‘He was gone.’
There was a final goodbye, too, for one of the other Daffodil Girls. The following day Donna was adjusting to the idea that her husband had left when, with no warning, he appeared at the front door. En route from the sitting room to the kitchen, Donna was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Craig, dressed in his desert combats, filling the small hallway of their army quarter. Standing an imposing six foot three inches, Craig filled most rooms in the house – but his vivacious personality was as much to blame for this as his bulk.
Donna felt a myriad emotions: surprise at seeing him, inexplicably shy and awkward – and slightly frustrated that they would have to go through their goodbye all over again. ‘What you doing back?’ she asked. Craig explained that his departure from camp had been delayed, so he and a mate had decided to sneak off for one last kiss goodbye with their wives.
‘This is it this time,’ he told her before lifting her on to one of the kitchen chairs to give her a kiss and a cuddle. At five foot four, Donna was just under a foot shorter than her husband so this was the only way for them to say goodbye eye-to-eye. ‘I was trying not to show emotion,’ Donna recalls, ‘because I didn’t want him to think I was at home alone, all upset. If they’re focusing too much on home that could mean they are distracted and in a war zone that could get them killed. Craig said, “I’m going to miss you. Make sure you look after Bradley.” I can’t remember the last words we said, but it was probably, “Keep safe”. I used to say that a lot.’
Donna remembers Craig lifting her down off the chair. ‘He grabbed me because I’m so short. We were kissing and when he let go of me on the floor he let go of me from the kiss as well. He said – in between kisses – he had to go now and that was it. I watched him get in the car and waved – but I could only wave so much because the bushes were in the way. And I thought he’s gone – he’s gone for real this time.’
THE DAFFODIL GIRLS is a tale that begins with a goodbye. Because for an army wife, watching your loved one leave to spend many months away is a moment that goes with the territory. It is a rite of passage that the partners of every rank and regiment have to go through, that the wives of 2 Royal Welsh are all too familiar with, and one that I know myself. As well as being a writer, I too am an army wife. Or maybe I should say, that as well as being an army wife, I am also a writer. That might sound a strange way to put it, but being married to a soldier is different to saying ‘I do’ to a doctor, a tradesman or a banker: it is a way of life that defines who you are. That’s why I wanted to write this book – to show through the experiences of one battalion’s wives what being an army wife is all about.
Like many of the Daffodil Girls, I never set out to marry a soldier. I met Ed for the first time a week before he left for Iraq, when he held a joint leaving party with a good friend of mine from university. I was seeing someone at the time – as was Ed – but six months later, post-tour, our mutual friend brought Ed to a Halloween party my flatmate and I were hosting. I was impressed by the effort he had gone to over his costume – a native American Indian-turned-zombie, complete with white face paint and convincing blood. He joined our group of friends easily and confidently. When the time came for the group to leave my tiny two-bedroom flat and move on to a club down the road, I called him over, saying, ‘You look like you have a loud voice, can you get this lot to leave?’ Leave they did, and that night he and I kissed and danced and talked (in that order).
The next day I emailed a girlfriend, telling her about him and ending my message with the now-immortal line, ‘There is a real chemistry but he’s in the army, so it is just going to be a fling.’ Attracted though I was by Ed’s confidence, manners and cavalry-officer charm, I was never going to fall for an army boy – much less marry one. His was a world that I did not understand, nor had I any desire to do so.
All who knew me universally mocked the idea of me becoming an army wife. It seemed a strange idea to me, too, though like most people on Civvy Street, my feelings were based on that inconsistent mix of not really knowing what being an army wife meant, while at the same time being sure that whatever it was, it wasn’t really for me. But as my relationship with Ed became more serious, so the possibility of my marrying a soldier became increasingly likely. It was time to put my preconceptions aside and find the answer to the question I’d so far been avoiding. What does it really mean to be an army wife?
The first time the Daffodil Girls met their future husbands, the fact that they were talking to a soldier was secondary to how the men looked, what they said, and that sparkle in their eye. Listening to each of them tell, with warmth and humour, their stories of how they got together, it’s easy to forget what these women’s husbands do for a day job – for this moment at least, the Daffodil Girls are like any other group of girlfriends, reminiscing about the day they fell in love.
It had been just another night at her local nightclub in Catterick for Donna, until she caught sight of Craig. She had been standing in the DJ booth, chatting to a friend, when she saw him: tall, smiling and handsome, and wearing a Welsh rugby top. Donna can’t remember exactly what is was about him that caught her eye, but he immediately stood out from the group of mates he was dancing with. Donna didn’t usually do this sort of thing, but she found herself pushing through the throng of dancing revellers in order to speak to him.
When she finally got over to where he was dancing, the music was so loud that Donna had to shout to make herself heard. Not only that, but she had to stand on tiptoe to reach his ear.
‘Are you Welsh?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Craig shouted back.
The couple starting talking, or at least tried to start talking over the music before having a dance. Craig, as he had now introduced himself, took Donna to the bar where he bought her a drink. They sat down in a corner where they started to get to know one another properly. They got on well immediately, but when she found out he was a soldier, Donna’s instant reaction was that this was unlikely to go any further. Living in a garrison town, Donna was used to soldiers and the fact that they rarely called when they said they would do so. So even though Craig promised to call, and they shared a kiss that night, Donna said goodbye not expecting to hear from him again.
For Julie, her relationship with Dai was almost over before it had begun. It was a Friday night and she had got dressed up to the nines for their first date: long blonde hair piled up on her head, the smallest of miniskirts grazing her thighs, a crop top and knee-high boots. If she was being honest, she hadn’t been completely sure about Dai when she had first met him through a friend, but after a year of him visiting her home village in Wales, she had slowly got to know him. So when he asked her out on a date, she said yes. But with no sign of him as first the minutes and then the hours started to tick by, she was beginning to regret accepting.
It wasn’t until the next day that Dai called, full of apologies. His explanation for standing her up was perhaps not the strongest of excuses – a drink or two with some mates had turned into a bit of a session and he had fallen asleep. Even so, there was something about him that persuaded Julie to give him a second chance. She got dressed up again, but once more Dai failed to show up. By this point, Julie was livid but, even so, something still told her not to give up – on the Sunday he did show up and, taking her to the local pub, introduced her to most of his family. ‘It was a bit of a shock,’ says Julie, ‘but I got to know him and,’ she remembers fondly, ‘that was it.’
Liverpudlian Dereynn was on holiday in Penbryn Sands when she met her future husband, Taff. Not only was he younger than her (she was twenty, he eighteen), his case wasn’t helped by one of the corniest chat-up lines to open with, when he asked, ‘Do you come here often?’ There was something about his smile, though, that Dereynn couldn’t help but like, and even though she didn’t expect to find anything in common with a boy from the valleys, something clicked. When it was time for the holiday to end, the pair agreed to stay in touch.
Amanda, meanwhile, had long admired her school friend’s elder brother, Lee. Lee, too, had noticed the pretty blonde friend of his little sister, but decided that at sixteen, she was too young for him. Two years later, however, and with Amanda now eighteen, Lee showed up at her house. Now twenty-one and a soldier, Lee was on Easter leave when he decided to pluck up the courage to ask her out for a drink. Amanda said yes. Things went well and walking her home that night, Lee asked if he could take her out again, properly, the following evening. Lee took her to watch a show in the local pub – appropriately enough, given his battalion, this first ‘proper’ date was on St David’s Day.
Amanda was smitten and so, it seemed, was Lee: he asked to see her again the following day. That evening, Amanda’s mum was walking her to the bus stop when a breathless and apologetic Lee ran past them – in the wrong direction. He was running late, he explained and would meet her there as soon as he could. Amanda’s response was one of annoyance but as the pair watched Lee disappear, her mum knew better.
‘You’re going to marry him,’ she said.
‘Don’t be daft,’ retorted Amanda.
Her mum, though, was certain. ‘I’m telling you now – you’re going to marry him.’
For Kirsty, the moment when she knew things were about to change was when Benedict suggested they sneak away from their friends in the club, and go for a walk along the seafront. Kirsty had first met Ben a couple of years earlier when they both had summer jobs at a local theme park, and they had been good friends ever since. She had liked him for ages, and thought that he felt the same about her, but girlfriends, boyfriends and bad timing had always conspired to keep them apart. Now, however, both were single, and working and living in the same area: Kirsty as a trainee reporter on the local paper, Ben at a school while he waited for term to begin on his officer cadet course at Sandhurst.