[The men are camped around a fire in the Scottish Highlands]
Go on then, Bruce, what scares you?
C Campbell
The self-destructive nature of the human condition.
You're just takin' the piss now.
C Campbell
Oh, you think so?
What about you then, Spoon?
Hm, there's no argument there. Joe?
K Kirkley
Only one thing guaranteed to put the shits up me: a penalty shoot-out.
Watchin' a penalty shoot-out... with Joe.
C Campbell
What about you, Coop?
Spiders. And women. And, uh... spider-women.
I want to know what scares the Sarge.
Piss off, man, nothin' scares the Sarge.
I don't know about that; the thought of never seeing my wife again scares the shit out of me. That and those little things that make your skin crawl and the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
K Kirkley
You mean like Spoon? [Spoon makes an "up yours" gesture]
[chuckles]
No, there's one thing, actually, in particular that I'll remember 'til the day I die. Yeah, it was back in '91, just before my unit was flown out to Kuwait to mop up the last pockets of resistance. Me and this young fella called Eddie Oswald decided to get a tattoo done to commemorate our first trip into the desert.
C Campbell
I remember 'im, he was... he was a stocky hardcase with a broken nose and a bong eye, eh?
Yeah, that's him. Good-lookin' fella, big hit with the ladies. [the men chuckle] Anyway, me and Eddie, we went and had a few drinks - we had a lot of drinks - and we went down to the tattoo parlor, and I got a desert rat done. And Eddie, being Eddie, wanted something a bit more meaning. And being a bit of a believer, he said that his soul still belonged to God. But his flesh, oh, his flesh was way beyond redemption, and it was up to Satan to save his skin. So he got this **** great laughing devil tattooed right on his arse. [the men laugh] Anyway, about six days later, we were making a regular sweep along the Iraqi border, and Eddie... poor ****er triggered an anti-tank mine.
[The men go quiet]
Yeah, we all saw it happen, I mean, he was on point. White, blinding lightning flash and a **** deafening crack, and by the time we picked ourselves up off the deck, Eddie was... he was gone. Just bits and pieces of him, s'all that remained, this big ****in' red circle, hundred meters. I'll tell you something, lads, it really puts things in perspective when you have to scoop your mate up with a shovel and stick him in a bin bag. Anyway, the thing that really did our nuts in that day was when you, uh... came across a bit you recognized. Bit of ear, toe, a nose, a tooth. But the thing that really freaked us out that day was when Left-Hand Charlie found the bit of Eddie with the tattoo on it. I mean, everything else was burnt to a crisp, covered in claret, all mushed up, pulped up. Not this bit. This bit was perfect. And there's old Nick, chortlin' his ****in' arsehole off at us. So you could say that Eddie was right, that Satan did indeed save his skin. Just not all of it. Or you could say that Eddie was just unlucky. Either way, it taught me to keep a very open mind. Boom. Boom.
You know what this reminds me of? Rorke's Drift. A hundred men of Harlech making a desperate stand against ten thousand Zulu warriors. Outnumbered, surrounded, staring death in the face, not flinching for a moment. Balls of British steel.
K Kirkley
You're bloody loving this, aren't you? It's totally bone. That's all there is to say.
