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2-2
2. I pondered quitting the Army. What was the point of staying if I couldnt actually be a soldier? I talked it over with Chels. She was torn. On the one hand she couldnt hide her relief. On theother she knew how much I wanted to be there for my team.
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2-3
3. To mark the tenth anniversary of our mothers death, Willy and I organized a concert in her honor. The proceeds would go to her favorite charities, and to a new charity Id just launched Sentebale. Its mission: the fight against HIV in Lesotho, part
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2-4
4. Days later I was in Botswana, with Chels. We went to stay with Teej and Mike. Adi was there too. The first convergence of those four special people in my life. It felt like bringing Chels home tomeet Mum and Dad and big bro. Major step, we all kne
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2-5
5. Early autumn. Drystone walls, patchwork fields, sheep snacking on grassy slopes. Dramaticlimestone cliffs and crags and scree. In every direction, another beautiful purple moor. Thelandscape wasnt quite so famous as the Lake District, just over to
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2-6
6. Once I was a trained FAC, I had to become combat ready, which meant mastering twenty-eightdifferent combat controls. A control was basically an interaction with an aircraft. Each control was a scenario, a littleplay. For instance, imagine two airc
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2-7
7. Pa knew I was living at Knights Hill, knew what I was up to. And he was just down the road atSandringham on an extended visit. And yet he never dropped in. Giving me space, I guess. Also, he was still very much in his newlywed phase, even though t
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2-8
8. England was in the semifinal of the 2007 Rugby World Cup. No one had predicted that. No onehad believed England was any good this time round, and now they were on the verge of winning itall. Millions of Britons were swept away with rugby fever, in
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2-9
9. One month later I went to RAF Brize Norton and boarded a C-17. There were dozens of othersoldiers on the plane, but I was the only stowaway. With help from Colonel Ed and JLP, I boardedin secret, then crept into an alcove behind the cockpit. The a
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2-10
10. At the center of Dwyer was a towering spike, a kind of makeshift Nelsons Column. Nailed to itwere dozens of arrows, pointing every which way, each arrow painted with the name of a placesome soldier at Dwyer called home. Sydney Australia 7223 mile
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2-11
11. Dwyers ops room was a box wrapped in desert camo. The floor was thick black plastic made ofinterlinked pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. It made a weird noise when you walked across it. Thefocal point of the room, indeed the whole camp, was the main
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2-12
12. The Rover had an alternative name, because everything in the Army needed an alternative name. Kill TV. As in: Whatcha doing? Just watching a bit of Kill TV. The name was meant to be ironic, I figured. Or else it was just blatantly fake advertisin
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2-13
13. After receiving permission to cross my airspace, a pilot wouldnt always cruise on through, hedarrow through, and sometimes his need to know conditions on the ground would be urgent. Everysecond mattered. Life and death were in my hands. I was cal
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2-14
14. At times I worried that I was actually missing out on the real war. Was I perhaps sitting in thewars waiting room? The real war, I feared, was just down the valley; I could see the thick puffs ofsmoke, the plumes from explosions, mostly in and ar
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2-15
15. My job at Delhi was similar to the one Id had at Dwyer. Only the hours were different. Constant. At Delhi I was on call, day and night. The ops room was a former classroom. Like seemingly everything else in Afghanistan, theschool that housed Delh
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2-16
16. I got promoted, sort of. To a small lookout high above the battlefield. For quite some time thelookout had been driving the Taliban mad. We had it, they wanted it, and if they couldnt get itthen they were bound to destroy it. Theyd attacked the l
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