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The Gulf War made my first year at Towneley High School uncomfortable White lads taunted us Pakistanis with pictures of RAF Tornadoes in the newspapers, saying they were bombing us The divide was clear: if you were brown you were on the other side Not all the brown kids were the same; there were Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and they didn’t get on, but the whites came after us all There was one black boy at the school He was on the side of the white lads So we cheered when RAF pilots were shot down and paraded, beaten and bloodied Thirteen years later I was in Iraq   I was nothing before I went to Iraq I was a lad from Burnley who’d joined the army after messing up his A-Levels, a screw-up I wasn’t the clean Muslim boy who was going to get married and have kids I had tried to be, but I failed The grammar school got me to university but by that time I’d fallen for the military I would read manuals I’d borrowed from the army when I was meant to be getting on with Chemistry I learned how to storm trenches, how to build bridges and how to blow them up, how to clean myself in a chemical war, how to soldier I’d spend my nights at the gym and planning long running routes on Ordnance Survey maps, dreaming about running for miles Thirteen miles a night would see me right I had been a problem, but then I took responsibility for myself and joined up I’d look at others with anger, ‘Why can’t you sort your own life out instead of whingeing? Why don’t you grow a set of balls and get yourself in uniform?’ I’d look at the men in beards and think, ‘Screw you’ I was a statistic but the army made me more The lads made me more than I ever could have been on my own, sat there trying to think my way out of the room They opened the door, showed me the light, how to live, and they