Harry Parker Tells His Story

It was on July 2009, when Harry Parker was returning from a night patrol with some 50 men, that he made a mistake – deciding to take a line of soldiers on a short cut through a field rather than follow the longer path.

‘It was only my arrogance as a soldier to walk across that field, because it was this close to camp, and I thought, right, I’ll take a risk here rather than minesweeping it.’

Of the moments surrounding his stepping on the IED, he says; “I never quite knew the full story because obviously I was eyes shut, gritting teeth.” His men radioed the company patrol base, where the incident was reported back to Camp Bastion – a process called a ‘nine-liner’ – to alert the medical emergency response team.

Fortunately for Harry, an American helicopter was already in the air and in the area. It landed at the patrol base and carried him away. It took 18 minutes for the helicopter to get him from Nad-e-Ali district in Central Helmand to the military hospital at Camp Bastion, during which time Harry, then a captain in 4th Battalion The Rifles, teetered on the brink of death.

“I thought I was conscious for all of it but then, 10 days later, someone told me; ‘We had to start your heart five times!’” the Blesma Member says now. He lost his lower left leg and a little finger in the blast, and after he was flown home his lower right leg was amputated at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham.

“Being in a place where I’d had a normal life before suddenly brought it into stark relief; I’ve got no legs,” he says.

“It was one of those moments when realisation came; I couldn’t go for a run any more. There was an element of mourning a loss. It came in short bursts. It was quite similar to losing someone you really loved.”

Harry has used this traumatic period as the basis for his ambitious debut novel Anatomy of a Soldier. “Writing about the explosion,” he says, “felt good creatively, but also, you’ve mined your personal experiences.” The process left him “a sweaty mess”.

Harry recently completed a postgraduate course in fine art at the Royal Drawing School in Shoreditch, London. The writer and artist still lives in London. Writing and drawing, he says, have been key to the restitution of his independence and sense of self.

The first things you notice about the 32 year old are not his impressively futuristic prosthetic legs, but rather his impeccable manners and jolly demeanour – and he is surprisingly candid.

‘When I left the Army in 2013, it was the first time for 100 years that there hadn’t been a Parker in the Services.” His father is General Sir Nick Parker who, only four months after his son was wounded, took up the post of Deputy Nato Commander in Afghanistan.

“Harry would be horrified if I didn’t go,” Sir Nick said at the time, “he’d think I was a wimp.” His son confirms.

“I told him; ‘You’d better go.’ I was getting on with recovery and Dad was getting on with his job.” (Looking back, he says it was a “morphine-induced” reaction that led to him being so insistent that his father should leave.

There is little such bravado in Anatomy of a Soldier, a book that employs a unique conceit. The story of Captain Tom Barnes and his fateful encounter with a landmine is told from the viewpoints of 45 objects – helmet, bicycle, dog tags, rifle round, rug, medical instruments, handbag, medal, snowflake, drone – drawn from combat and domestic arenas, before, during and after the explosion.

Has Harry employed a mechanism that lets him keep his distance? “I didn’t really want to write my story,” he says. “I didn’t want to write; ‘I was in the Helmand Valley...’” Instead, Harry has created an accomplished piece of literary cubism.

“My story is much more complicated than Tom’s in terms of what happens when you get blown up,” he says. “Fiction let me tell more, in a sense. You can condense.”

In his novel Harry does not name the war zone, presumably to avoid any political comment about the conflict in Afghanistan, especially considering his father’s role (he was in command until 2013). “I didn’t want to talk about equipment, or lack of it, or whether we should be there or not.”

As for his colleagues in the Army, he says; “For a long time I felt much more comfortable being with people who weren’t soldiers. I felt the people I served with were embarrassed in front of me. I was a reminder of what could happen to them.”

After leaving Headley Court, Harry got a desk job in Whitehall before leaving in 2013 because his wife said he should do something ‘more creative.’ There are days when it is difficult to put on the hi-tech prosthetics.

“Learning to walk again is very time-consuming. It’s physically hard work. It’s painful. It’s frustrating.

But at the same time it’s exciting, you’re achieving,” he says.

“Six months in and you think; ‘God, I’m better.’ And then three years later you go; ‘I’m better still.’ But even now, skin grafts open up. It’s still painful, but you manage it psychologically and physically.”

His strategies include staying fit and healthy, keeping busy and using imagination to see past the restrictions of disability. And he has a determination not to be a victim.

I never really said I wanted to join the Army when I was older, I was more intro drawing

“I’ve never had that waking up in the night thing.” He pauses. “I’ve always looked forward. That’s not to say in 10 years’ time I might not break down and have some sort of flashback.”

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. Harry was born in 1983 and was, he says, an ‘Army brat’. Although the family home was in Wiltshire, he had an unsettled childhood owing to his father’s postings to Germany, Gibraltar, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He has an older brother, Tim, who works in finance.

“I never really said I wanted to join the Army,” he says. “I was more into drawing.” He discovered art as a child in Gibraltar. “I used to watch the planes landing and draw those or the aircraft carriers.”

After attending Radley College in Oxfordshire he completed a foundation in the study history of art at Falmouth College of Art. Following this he studied history of art at University College London. But a brief internship at an advertising firm in Canada altered his course and Harry joined the British Army. 

“I thought advertising was just lying to people, it wasn’t for me.” It was then that he considered joining up. “As long as I was commanding men and coming up with solutions to problems, that was being creative,” he says.

“For me, that’s all that drawing and writing are; how do I answer this problem?” Aged 23, shortly after leaving Sandhurst, Harry served in Iraq in 2007 as a platoon commander in Basra. The six-month tour was, he says, a sobering experience.

“It was just before we pulled out of the city and went to the airbase, so it was a pretty hairy time. We were 600 soldiers in a city of two million people.”

On returning from Basra he was stationed in Bulford, Wiltshire. When he was sent on tour to Helmand, Harry found himself in a very different role in a very different landscape. As a liaison officer he acted as a bridge between the Army and the local Afghans.

“I was trying to create a positive influence in the area, a cultural understanding of how we were acting,” he says. But it was too dangerous to get a proper foothold in the community, and too difficult for him to do anything meaningful.

“All I was doing was giving compensation to people whose fields had been burnt. I think young men fighting is such a waste. It is a waste, isn’t it? But I suppose the five years growing up out of the Army, writing this… that distance lets you see it.”

Anatomy of a Soldier is a novel of opposites – of infidels and insurgents, civilians and the military, able-bodied and injured – and yet the similarities between the combatants are telling. He shows how young Afghans are reacting to expectations.

In Anatomy of a Soldier, Harry explains, “I set rules. The objects don’t have emotion, they can’t speak. They can only know what someone is thinking if they are touching them. The rules don’t matter for the reader, they were for me to keep a structure.”

His book does not make for comfortable reading.

There are moments when the objects expose bittersweet intimacies, such as when the protagonist’s father shaves his bed-bound son. The voice of the razor captures a comforting sense of purpose for the older man. But perhaps the most bracing chapter chronicles the amputation of Barnes’s remaining leg in hospital in Britain, an operation narrated by the electric saw.

Harry was unconscious when he underwent the procedure, but he researched the details. “You can watch one on YouTube,” he says. “I was like; ‘Can I write a chapter which makes people gag?’”

You’ve got young men like me who join the army for the same reason that they went off and built bases in the woods when they were 10'

In November 2009, Sir Nick Parker claimed in a newspaper interview that although his son had ‘had a very unwanted change to his life, it won’t stop him realising his full potential.’ It may have seemed like a father putting on a brave face but it was prescient.

In the years since, Harry has married, had a daughter, earned a master’s degree, had his designs used for the medals awarded at the Invictus Games, and written an outstanding book. And he maintains that he wouldn’t change what has happened to him.

“You regret at times, but overall it was a positive experience. When people say; ‘I’m so sorry,’” he reflects with a smile, “I say; ‘Don’t be, my life’s much more interesting.’”

An extract of Anatomy of a Soldier (Faber, £14.99)

He has followed this up with his latest book "hybrid humans"