Jason Elliot - The Network

At the time we are young enough to feel immortal. Our hosts, who are as hardy and friendly as they are ill-equipped and untrained, allow us to join them on several operations against their enemies. We accompany them on mine-laying operations to cripple military convoys, and on attacks against military posts in the region. Our happy-go-lucky party is itself frequently a target, and we experience the perverse relish of hearing the musical whine of ricocheting bullets nearby and of dusting ourselves off after diving for cover from incoming shells.

At first we carry no weapons and agree only to observe the plight of our hosts. Then one night, by moonlight, we join a team of thirty-five men who steal towards an enemy position in the hope of shooting it into submission. It’s a mud-walled fortified house with two small watchtowers, manned by Afghan army conscripts under Soviet command. Ten yards short of the perimeter fence an explosion sends our commander flying into the air, his leg severed at the knee by a powerful anti-personnel mine. Manny is behind him, his face blasted by flying grit from the explosion, but he manages to drag the commander into cover. We withdraw in chaos as the incandescent threads of tracer rounds tear into the darkness around us. One of our party is shot cleanly through his hand, and another has a miraculous escape as a bullet lodges in the rifle which he’s slung over his back. We walk for several hours to reach our headquarters, which comprises a network of caves carved into an escarpment beneath a village. At dawn, with the name of God on his lips, our commander dies.

It’s not our war. But Manny puts forward the idea that with some explosives and a few more fighters we can take the enemy post, and he begs the deputy commander to request additional forces for a follow-up attack. Unprompted, he ignites the promise of retribution in the grief-stricken minds of our group. He has a natural authority and confidence that fascinates the Afghans, and in the days following the commander’s burial on the hillside above our cave, there are long discussions.

A daylight reconnaissance of the building lends force to his argument. We study it from half a mile away through an ancient pair of binoculars and discover the shape of a bricked-up arched doorway in its rear wall. This is likely to be the weakest point and it’s here that Manny suggests we attack. He makes an earth model of the fort and rings it with tiny pebbles to indicate the minefield that surrounds it. In the dust he draws the fields of fire, the points at which the men are to position themselves, and where to put the cut-off groups which will deal with any attempted counter-attack. All this he communicates in the small but forceful vocabulary of Persian he has taught himself over the course of a couple of weeks, and I’m jealous not only of his grasp of tactics but also of his precocious talent with a foreign language. It’s a powerful combination. A few days later, a dozen more fighters, dark-skinned, bearded and draped with bandoliers of ammunition and automatic weapons, appear at the entrance of our cave, asking for the Christian mujahid.

It’s a daring plan, refined over the course of several evenings. A lead man will prod his way through the mined perimeter, allowing Manny to advance to the rear of the building. An explosive charge, cast from the melted TNT of anti-tank mines, will destroy the wall, allowing entry to a storming party. The fort’s towers, which contain light machine guns, will be attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. Three Soviet parachute flares will illuminate the attack. Manny drives home the importance of timing and coordination, and the disciplined use of directed fire. The men are entranced.

And incredibly, it works. There is no need for the storming party. The rear wall is thinner than we calculate, and the explosive charge tears open a hole the size of a garage door. Our light machine guns pour fire into the breached wall, and we wait for the signal to move. But within seconds the terrified occupants are already pouring out, caught in the eerie artificial sun of the hissing flare overhead. Two members of the dreaded KHAD, the Afghan secret service, are betrayed by the surrendering men, and are killed resisting capture inside the building. The attack is a textbook success, and the hated post has fallen.

When Manny starts showing signs of a violent fever a few days later I’m secretly relieved. News of the Christian commander’s victory has spread with electrical speed, and we both know that before long the Afghan secret police will hear of it and report the presence of a foreign mercenary to their Soviet masters. The risks of staying are too great both for ourselves and our hosts, and the decision is made for us to return to Pakistan to recuperate. On the day of our departure I witness the incongruous sight of tears in the eyes of several of the men, warriors we imagined were impervious to pain.

I have no doubts about what would have happened to us had we stayed on. Manny possesses a combination of daring and ambition which, in a war as unpredictable and brutal as Afghanistan’s, will eventually end in a tragedy I don’t want to witness. Two weeks later we’re in England, shocked and depressed at how unreal everything seems. We long, silently, to return at once to Afghanistan and to the danger and the beauty of the place that has made us feel so very alive. We have shared in the thrill of near-death and in the agony of a nation torn apart by conflict: we are modern-day blood brothers. The prospect of ordinary life among people who care nothing for the privileges of peacetime yet whose lives are filled with a thousand petty worries, seems like a prison sentence to us both.

Manny emerges from Sandhurst to join a cavalry regiment with a reputation for dash and courage. I visit him for the occasional party at the officers’ mess, where the spirit of romance is kept alive among fit and idealistic young men in red jackets and gold piping. The dinners are pleasantly rowdy and fuelled by a generous flow of wine. At one I embarrass myself by not passing the port along. Later, I watch Manny attempt a ritual capture of the commanding officer’s spurs, by crawling beneath the long tables decorated with regimental silver ornaments from Balaclava. At another, the evening culminates in a fire-extinguisher fight in the corridors of the mess.

I decide to follow suit, and join my father’s regiment after being awarded a short-service commission. In the dreary lecture rooms that huddle behind the grand facades at Sandhurst I plough through Clausewitz and the grand concepts of attrition and manoeuvre. My knowledge of Middle Eastern languages has not gone unnoticed, and takes me to the army language school in Beaconsfield and to Ashford to spend time with the Green Team, better known as the Intelligence Corps. In my private life, by a cruel coincidence, Manny and I fall for the same woman, with whom we both spend, at different times, our every spare moment. For a year we are in a bittersweet competition for her favour, and our friendship is heavily strained by rivalry. When the woman we are in love with finally abandons both of us, our friendship is restored, almost magically intact.

Meanwhile, in the affairs of the greater world, there’s a kind of watershed. After a brutal ten-year occupation, the Soviets make their ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, and their empire unravels. The Red Army’s venture in Afghanistan is over, and I can’t help feeling that the world’s last good war has come to an end. Manny feels the same.

I have known the Baroness, or imagine I’ve known her, since her appearance in my childhood home as my father’s guest and old friend. Her precise connection with my father is never explained and it doesn’t occur to me to ask. She’s an academic of the old school, and has written a book about her adventurous travels in the Middle East. I think her husband was a diplomat. She is courteous to a fault, and a woman of poise and genuine charm. I’ve never seen her not wearing her most formal clothes.