Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Army curry,’ Luke said, nudging his plate.

‘You have to taste the real McCoy. You have to go to Calcutta.’

‘Don’t sweat it, Major,’ Luke said. ‘We’re going to get this job done and then we’re out of here.’ Scullion gripped his shoulder and Luke imagined he was talking to all the boys.

‘It’s a great operation this, Captain Campbell. A brilliant thing to be doing. I just feel upset.’

‘Come on, sir. We’re the Western Fusiliers.’

‘I’m the son of a barman, Luke. Believe me. The sons of barmen have taken over the world.’

OQAB TSUKA

Private Dooley was rolling a cigarette at the back of the hall, a breeze-block community centre in Maiwand. The hall was packed and after a while Luke sat in the row beside him. In front a staff sergeant with the new Royal Caledonians was gassing about Scullion and the regiment. ‘And this major’s a total fucking mentalist,’ he said.

‘What’s mental about him?’ asked the lance corporal beside him.

‘Brutal cunt, Mark. He’s about forty-eight. He fought in every fucking battle you can think of since the Falklands. Bosnia, the lot. I’m talking about Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone.’

People change, thought Luke. The world changes. Maybe he’s just not the person he was any more. Maybe he’s sick. He thought carefully as he listened to the Scottish men. Just as likely it’s me that’s sick. It’s me that can’t stand the pace. The major is probably as committed as he ever was and it’s me that’s changed my mind. Every soldier has his ups and downs, don’t they? Every soldier. Maybe Scullion’s just going through a bad

patch in his personal life, like he said, and it’s nothing more, except in your own head, Luke.

‘Iraq? He fought in Iraq?’ asked Mark.

‘Obviously. He was a big man in Basra. Is that when you joined up?’

‘Aye. In 2003.’

‘Right. Well: Scullion. Jesus fuck. He would lift a bazooka to swat a fly.’

‘Cool,’ Mark said. ‘You’ve got to have your team.’ Luke thought there was something familiar about the young lance corporal, but he didn’t say anything and just listened.

‘Aye, well. Scullion certainly knows his team. And he gave the IRA a right shoeing as well. A brutal cunt is what they say. Republicans, Republican Guard: he wiped half of them before they could even get their sandshoes on. Did the whole thing on expensive whisky and a raging fucken hard-on for modern warfare. Knows everything. Goes into battle with a book in his hand. A brainbox. Like Tim Collins, man. I’m talking supersoldier and I’m not kidding on. Goes hard. Could melt a platoon without trying. Half of the pikeys in here would surrender to his fucken verbals alone.’

‘Easy, boys,’ Luke said from behind.

‘What the fuck …’

‘Shut yer cake-hole. Captain Campbell here. Yer in mixed company, boys.’ The lance corporal turned when he heard the Scottish accent, but then he put his eyes front.

‘You tell them, sir,’ said Private Lennox, squeezing into the back row and stealing the captain’s roll-up from behind his ear. ‘Fucken Aquafresh sitting there. A tube wi’ three stripes.’ Dooley said it loud enough for the staff sergeant to hear.

‘That’s enough,’ Luke said. They all enjoyed a bit of

inter-regimental strife, but he wanted to get back in focus.

There was a lot of noise in the hall and every soldier was hungry to get past the mountains and do some damage. Dooley, Flannigan and Lennox kept close to the captain, but he wasn’t paying much attention to them. He was busy waiting for Scullion to come through the door, looking for signs that the major was under control.

When Scullion came in Luke saw Rashid behind him. Jamal Rashid was a good soldier in the Afghan army, a captain in fact, and he had emerged during training at Camp Bastion as a future military leader and an effective speaker of English. He had an eyepatch and it made him seem very distinguished to Scullion. The Afghan captain was a one-man justification for the surge: ‘Look,’ they said, ‘look at him; in ten years’ time the country will be filled with Rashids.’

He was always with Scullion that summer and it sometimes appeared that Scullion’s last great push was to show Rashid the old arts. Only Luke knew how tough that must have been. Scullion had scars in places nobody would ever see and he wasn’t sleeping. He was falling apart. Looking from the back row, the captain remembered a night two years before, a night he spent with the major and a bottle of Bushmills. Scullion had spoken of a terrible thing that had happened in Bosnia. A squaddie had his face torn off by a sniper in Vitez in 1993, right next to the major, who had been friends with the young man. But all that stuff had taken its toll. Luke remembered how the major loved the old ballads and said his mother had sung them at lock-ins in Mullingar.

Scullion had persuaded himself, just about, that creating electricity and irrigating the warlords’ poppy fields was a better idea than blasting the population from its caves. In his heart, Scullion

felt the Afghans had been destroyed by corruption, by keeping faith with sociopaths and fascists. He agreed with those who spoke of an international caliphate, an order of terror, and, in his militant dreams, he believed such murderers might eventually be bombed into civilisation. This was the war. Scullion felt that bomb strikes and ground troops were the only way because these people didn’t respect talks. What they liked was to cut people’s heads off live on the Internet. What they liked was to cut out the enemy’s liver and eat it. He often said this, but he said many things and now he was trying irrigation.

It had taken a while to reach Trinity College, a while to reach Edmund Burke, then Gower Street in London, University College and afternoon walks round the British Museum. It took a while for him to learn that kneecappings and beheadings might be beaten by good will and enlightenment, but Charles Scullion was still arguing with himself. In his heart he was old school. Since Christmas in Helmand he had held the coalition line on peace-building while thinking constantly of the trigger. When Luke examined his face he saw the eyes of a little counter-assassin from Westmeath. They were fogged with humanitarianism and strict orders, but they were still the eyes of a man who knew what to do in a dark alleyway.

Smoke, trepidation, farts. The air-conditioning could do its best but the room was unpleasant. Luke nodded at the major as he lifted the pointer. He was probably going to be okay because he’d got whatever it was out of his system and Luke imagined the Xanax must have dipped his headlamps. He appeared to be breathing normally and thinking straight, his silver hair combed into a neat parting and his eyes blue. Scullion placed a volume of Matthew Arnold’s poems on the table.

Rashid was the only ANA soldier in the room. With the eyepatch and the blue uniform he stood out. ‘Okay, fellas,’ Scullion said. ‘You all have your jobs. Many of you will be cheered to learn that some senior officers, including yours truly, will be on the ground for this mission.’ He was leaning on the pointer with his sleeves rolled up. Luke reminded himself of an old truth about briefings: they are never brief. Yet Scullion could bring the weather in on time. ‘I will be travelling with a section of the Royal Western Fusiliers deployed here in a mentoring capacity. But you all have a mentoring role in this operation: be sure to show our local colleagues how to behave.’ Scullion seemed to absorb a cold look from Rashid. ‘And learn from them, too,’ he added. The hall shifted from one foot to the other and Rashid wiped his good eye.

‘Recent events in this theatre notwithstanding,’ Scullion said, ‘I believe our mission is absolutely clear. This will be a major development project for the Afghan people. Five dozen officers have worked for six months preparing the way. We bring clean water, we also bring culture. Now listen. This is Operation Eagle’s Summit. By necessity and by grand design, our job is to facilitate the onset of prosperity among the peasants. Putting aside our previous efforts to bomb them to kingdom come, we now rectify all political errors by giving them light and water. The operation’s code name is T2. Remember that. You are part of a convoy led by 13 Air Assault delivering a third turbine to the great dam at Kajaki. HET trucks will carry the blessed item in seven parts weighing thirty tons each. Assuredly, these vital organs will pump new blood to the valley. We’re talking fifty-one megawatts of new power. Got that? A great sufficiency of electrical power and enough water flowing through to irrigate 650,000 acres of arid land. Tune your PRRs to channel one for minute-by-minute instructions.’