Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

toilette

?’

‘Bite me,’ Flannigan said. There was evening primrose in the cracks of the wall and Sergeant Docherty was scraping off a sample for his collection. He was also finishing off an argument, just as Luke came in. ‘They thought they were going to get Belgium in two years,’ he said. ‘Turns out they might get Bangladesh in thirty.’ The boys took the piss out of Docherty for being a square-bear and being pussy-whipped, but in secret they admired him, at twenty-six, for what he knew.

‘Oh, look,’ Major Scullion said. He was sitting on a petrol drum. ‘It’s the fucken sleeping beauty. Want a brew, Captain?’

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks.’

Scullion had the menacing look. And he never made anybody tea. ‘While you’ve been lying in your wank-pit, Captain Campbell,’ he said, ‘the boys and I have been arranging a party. A very private party, you understand. Private Lennox here, of the small stature, the ludicrous complexion and the ginger nut, has procured for the purpose of our evening entertainment a bag of the old Afghan sweet stuff.’

‘Dead on,’ Lennox said. ‘Proper clackie, so it is.’ He kicked the cement bag full of weed over the ground to Luke.

Another of the men in the platoon, a Paisley boy, chuckled like a monkey and peered with his mates over the top of a neighbouring tent. ‘Fuck sake, sir,’ he said, ‘you don’t even need cigarette

papers. Just spark up the end of that bag and ye’ll be toking a Superking.’

‘Be quiet, McKenna,’ Luke said.

‘Yeah. Shut it, McCrack-Whore. The captain here’s just getting his shit together after a small constitutional.’

‘That’s a walk, Doosh, not a sleep,’ Flannigan said.

‘Who cares? The captain will be joining the party in jig time. So fuck off, McCrack, and get on with unrolling your farter. And fuck off, Flange, with your

Oxford English Dictionary

.’

They were talking about food. It was usually girls or cars or watches or gaming, but tonight: food. Dooley’s girlfriend sent him packets of Super Noodles and a box of Dairy Milk and it made him glad he was marrying her because she knew the score. ‘Remember American Night?’ Lennox said. He was talking about the Thursday cookouts at Camp Shorabak when the Americans would pitch a scoff-house between the tents. ‘Gatorade. Chicken wings,’ Lennox said.

‘Beef jerky,’ Luke said.

‘That was proper plush,’ said Lennox. ‘You’ve never seen so many fucken rashers. American Night. I fucken love America. They’d have like Hershey bars and M&Ms to kill. Mounds of them. I’m talking chicken and beef motherfucker and those MREs falling off the truck, Meals-Ready-to-Eat. They were super-plush.’

‘And films,’ Dooley said.

‘That’s right. Lethal with the films. I love America. Stuff that isn’t even on at the cinema for like a year.’

‘Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream,’ Flannigan said. ‘Buckets of it. How do they even get that stuff over here?’

‘It was the same in Iraq,’ Dooley said.

After an hour it was dark except for lights in some of the vehicles. The reefer glowed orange as it went round but it was the moon that picked out the ridge and the low buildings along the track. Scullion said a few fires in the distance were oil-drums burning in Ghorak, nothing sinister, just elders playing chess probably or Terry twisting wires and making their wee roadside contraptions. ‘That’s the thing,’ Scullion was saying. ‘You all think you know the terrain ’cause you’ve seen it playing video games.’ Half his face lit up as he smoked the joint and sniggered. ‘But don’t give me points man; give me a body count any day.’

‘Same,’ Lennox said. ‘I came here to get my fucken gun on, not to sit watching hexi-telly.’

‘Speaking of which.’ Dooley bent down and lit the Hexamine tablet on top of the low stove. Quickly it burned blue and the boys all gave a whistle and some of them asked for whoever it was to hurry up with the joint. ‘You’re all going blind,’ Lance Corporal McKenna said as he walked into the camp. ‘Between staring at the hexi-telly and playing with your dobbers, you gimps will soon be applying for invalidity.’

‘We’ll have to join the queue,’ Flannigan said. ‘Behind all the pikey horror-pigs in your family.’

Luke just watched them. Scullion was right. Younger soldiers often thought they knew the battleground; they saw graphics, screens, solid cover and fuck-off guns you could swap. It wasn’t all they saw but it was part of their understanding. They saw cheats and levels, badass motherfuckers, kill death ratios, and the kinds of marksman who jump up after they’re dead. Luke knew they all struggled, from time to time, to find the British army as interesting as its international gaming equivalent. They had run important

missions with their best mate from school and called in air support, over their headsets, from some kid in Pasadena they’d never met, some kid like them in a box-room. They’d beaten the Russian mafia with the help of club-kids from Reykjavik and bodyboarders from Magnetic Island. They’d obliterated the

A-rabs

They’d topped the board. They’d stayed up all night smoking weed and drinking huge bottles of Coke and ordering pizza before they cleared the civilian areas. The boys wanted action. They wanted something real that would become the highest level, the one they couldn’t reach on their consoles back home.

‘If they’re gonna hit us, I wish they’d just hit us,’ Lennox said.

‘Maybe it saves lives,’ Scullion said. ‘The war in Ireland might have ended sooner if those wee Provo kids could’ve blown up chip shops on screen.’

‘No, sir,’ Flannigan said. ‘It’s recruitment. I’m telling you. That’s the big new thing about it. Gamers are ripe. They’re fucken jumping to get out and stretch their legs. Every guy in this regiment has served time on

Call of Duty

Every one. Am I right?’

‘Even the educated ones?’

Luke smiled. ‘We started it,’ he said. He took the joint off Lennox and walked up to the wall. A smell of rose petals was coming from the field on the other side. He could make out the furrows and a yellow hosepipe. ‘The MOD has a game now called

Start Thinking, Soldier

.’

‘Yep. That’s right. That’s recruitment,’ Flannigan said. ‘Grab the little fuckers by the thumbs.’

‘There’s always been that sort of thing,’ Scullion said. ‘I loved

Top Gun

I loved fucken

Full Metal Jacket

John Wayne before that. Little boys with their eyes wide, wanting a gun. It’s all recruitment.’

‘It’s different,’ Flannigan said. ‘If you’ve got PlayStation then you actually know how to drive a tank. Jesus. I’m not kidding. The manufacturers have changed the controls on the new Challenger to be more like a video console. It’s exactly the same.’

‘Fuck off!’ Dooley said.

‘Look inside one. It’s a fact. Walk up the line now and look inside one, Doosh. I’m telling you.’

‘It’s true,’ Scullion said, taking the joint. ‘The CIA are putting in money nowadays to start up gaming companies.’

‘They used to put it into brainy magazines,’ Luke said. The major looked up and his smile was nostalgic.

‘

Encounter

,’ he said.

Sergeant Docherty had taken off his boots while staring at the hexi-telly. ‘Your hoofs are fucken rank, buddy,’ Lennox said. ‘Jesus, Leper.’

Docherty ignored him. He was never going to endanger his peace of mind with too much talk, yet he caught the officers’ attention after he calmly put down his boot and spat into the fire. ‘You’re talking about simulators,’ he said. ‘I think it’s ironic that the people who flew those planes on 9/11 taught themselves on flight simulators in Florida.’