Black Watch

By Gregory Burke

National Theatre of Scotland at the Barbican

It is difficult to know how to start with this one. There can be few people who do not start this with an amount of baggage. Everyone will have views about Iraq, about the army, about war in general. Many members of the audience will have families in Iraq or Afghanistan, many, I suspect were former members of the Black Watch. The issues raised are difficult for everyone. What this play does do, however, is take the side of the 'poor bloody infantry'. The words are largely those of the Black Watch, the incidents are real, the plot, if there is one, documentary. The story telling, however is pure theatre, done at a high level of skill, imagination and technique.

The writer meets a number of former members of the Black Watch in a Glasgow pub. They are not easy. Where's the fucking cunt you promised me? Where the fanny? Do you think we're going to talk to a wanker like you, you cunt, you fucking cunt. Quietly he does draw some stories form the group. As he does so the bar is transformed to Camp Dogwood near Faludjah. The group are living in their 'wagons' (Warrior armed cars) in temperatures of up to 50 degrees. The Iraqis throw mortars at them. Incessantly. They do not respond. No one knows what they are doing there. Everyone is frustrated, some want to get out and see some action, some just wait until they can get home. The Commander is just as frustrated I expect every lunatic terrorist from miles around to descend on us like bees to honey (the words of Lieutenant-Colonel James Cowan). Much of the action is banal. Petty squabbles, pointless bragging, thinking about home, always punctuated by huge explosions as everyone hurls themselves to the floor. I loved the old-timer who recommends walking around with a piece of paper, so no-one ever challenges what he is doing. As long as it looks official, he must be OK. An 'embedded journalist' arrives, but not until the Sergeant major has removed all offending porn from the walls of the wagon. The principal protagonist, Macca, is concerned about fairness, and complains of 'bullying'. When the Americans spend four hours ripping a small village to pieces and kill two civilians and a donkey it's not right. It's bullying. No-one could have fought back through that.

Interwoven with these two themes is the Government's decision to abolish the Black Watch, amalgamating it into other Scottish regiments. The localism of the Watch, the 'Golden thread', linking father and son across the communities from which the Black Watch has drawn its number is threatened, and indeed belittled. Scorn is poured n Geoff Hoon by Alex Salmond, the soldiers on the ground less obviously bothered, but clearly showing their local roots and the generational pull of the regiment. The best one can say is that it was insensitive, the surprise that after so many cock-ups Geoff Hoon is actually still in cabinet.

Interestingly, the violence of the group is far closer to the surface in the pub than in Iraq. In the pub the anger of the group is menacing, volatile. At one point it spills over as the writer almost has his arm broken so you know what it feels like. And this bridges us into the final section the pointless death of three of the group by a suicide bomber. This highly theatrical, slightly beautiful and utterly dismaying moment is portrayed in ultra slow motion by actors on ropes slowly descending through the chaos of the explosion. Understandably the group is distraught, but the more as it is so pointless. Why did the three die?  How could they have been defended? What is the point of it? It fits no pattern makes no sense. These men who understand death do not understand these deaths. In an eloquent scene Macca tells his commanding officer that he is going to leave when he returns home. Begging your pardon, Sir, but why the fuck do you stay?  What are you dong here? The commander is as short of answers as anyone else.

The play left me feeling deeply depressed. Had it been a political polemic against the war, it would have been limited in its effect, but this is as much about the communities from which the soldiers come as the war, and as much about the effect on the young men when they return as when they experienced the horrors of war. An extraordinary proportion  of the homeless on London's streets are ex-army, men who do not know where they fit or how to function in 'normal' society. These men are scarred irrevocably by their confused understanding of the war they fought in, the war where they were targets and didn't know how to fight back. It was so very positive about these victims in all the theatres, not just the front line, and this gave it a tremendous power. Depressing, but important and a very, very good play.

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