Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Ooh.

Ironic

,’ Lennox said.

Scullion nipped the end of his tongue with two fingers and offered a bleary laugh in the Leper’s direction. ‘Everything now is pre-experienced,’ he said. The men weren’t listening. Another burst of machine-gun fire went off in the valley and Docherty stood up holding one boot. Scullion then went off at him and nobody could work out why. ‘I can’t stand the way you fucken stink,’ he said. ‘The smell of you … it’s unbearable.’

‘What?’ Docherty said.

‘You,

personally

,’ Scullion said. He was suddenly over at Docherty and right up in his face, swaying in front of him. ‘You reek of sweat, the smell of you, what, it makes me fucking puke.’

‘I wash, just like everybody else, Major. I use deodorant. What do you want me to do?’

‘Nothing. You can’t do anything. You smell vile and it drives me mad.’ The sergeant just stared at him and then he went to arrange the night guard.

‘Put your boots back on,’ Luke said to the others. ‘We’re in a state of alert up here and I want everybody ready.’

‘Papers?’ Lennox said. He was talking to the group and fondling the cement bag and giggling. But the boys ignored him. They were too stoned and they just stared at the low blue flame. Time passed and Scullion stood up and came out with some complicated nonsense. They all wished the stars could lift them up or else come down to play.

‘I’m fucken stoned out my gourd,’ Dooley said.

‘No messing,’ Lennox said.

‘Champion weed,’ said Flannigan.

Luke just watched the soldiers and felt warm for the cold night, or cold for the warm night, lost in some little question about whether the world was round or made of putty. He smiled and felt his mouth go dry and then rootled in his pack for a stick of gum. Flannigan went over to the wall and took a piss then zipped up and looked down the edge of the plateau and saw bursts of green tracer. ‘They’re having a crack down there,’ he said. ‘Eat fire, you bitches! Eat metal, you Terry scum!’

‘Hey, wind it in. You’ll wake the babies,’ Scullion said, stretching out on a groundsheet and putting a bunched-up smock under his head. ‘Five billion stars and we still can’t find the knives and

forks. Get them a bloody knife and fork and they’re yours for life. People will believe in the transition if they feel their lives are getting better and that starts up there.’

‘The major’s talking pish,’ said Lance Corporal McKenna coming into the camp. He had two Afghan soldiers with him. ‘Talking pure pish. That’ll be the top-notch Asian

cigarettees

,’ McKenna added.

‘Drop dead, McCrack-Whore.’

‘Is that the price? Too dear. How about a Bounty bar and a packet of Turkish playing-cards?’

‘Done.’

They smoked and looked.

‘There’s a lot of fire down there.’

‘Who gives? If it’s not coming towards you, you don’t give a fuck,’ McKenna said.

The Afghans spoke not a word and smoked as if the weed was like a fresh supply of oxygen. Their teeth were knackered and they looked sixty but were probably thirty. ‘Dam is good at Kajaki,’ said one of them after his brain fogged over and the high settled in and the mellow scene shaped up like a welcome.

‘That’s right. We don’t give a fuck,’ Dooley said.

Luke examined the red returning fire — red was Allied, green was Terry — and thought of those strings of lights you get at fun-fairs. He followed the dots and thought of Ayrshire nights when the amusement arcade became the brightest thing on the coast. Lennox put

Natural Born Chaos

by Soilwork on his iPod. Usually he just listened with one earphone, but he had mini-speakers in the camp and he jacked the sound up. The guitars went off and everybody smiled, the Afghans too, not like their normal faces but actual smiles breaking out, and Luke stared up and

imagined the tracer fire was firing in time to Lennox’s stupid music. Yes, Luke thought, it was nice to be here with the smell of roses coming over the wall and the men showing the Afghan squaddies how to play air guitar and some of them falling asleep in their boots. Luke lay back giggling when he heard Lennox talking about the girl who was going to marry Doosh. He was rolling out the abuse, saying you’d think Dooley couldn’t pull the ring off a can of Red Bull but it turns out the girl’s as fit as a butcher’s dog.

LET THEM KNOW

The ambush came early that night. Docherty was up and talking to Bosh-Bosh the signals operator and sticking his fingers in a muesli pack when the radio went berserk. ‘Incoming on the crane side. Sniper fire. Over!’ McKenna had been on guard with the two Afghans, but the Afghans couldn’t be found. Luke was half awake. He felt he’d almost known it was coming, as if the enemy had been getting closer all day. His boots were on and he grabbed his helmet and smock and was zipped up in seconds. He never thought about how to distinguish himself in battle; that’s not what good officers think. They think about the men. And then they think about how to obliterate the threat.

Flannigan was tossing sandbags. ‘Over there, over there,’ he kept shouting. Lennox pulled the machine-gun off the wagon and soon they were directing fire into the trees behind the old wall.

‘Lennox, get your fucken helmet on,’ Luke said.

‘Over there!’ shouted Flannigan.

The snipers were few and quite far off but fear of snipers shrinks distance: they are on top of you. They are here. Luke’s eyes narrowed as if they were telescopic and his hands grew jumpy and his instincts made an instant grid of the ground. ‘Against the wall! Dooley, Lennox. Get the gun propped in that corner. Bosh?’

‘Captain?’ the signals man said.

‘What they saying?’

‘Incoming fire from below. Quite heavy. Here’s your set.’ Luke put his helmet on and fixed the earpiece and immediately heard the crackles and the news that several dozen insurgents were under the plateau trying to poke holes in the convoy. The men around him were still shouting and bawling and sending out a great deal of fire. That was the thing you always forgot later — the shouting, the noise, the great thunder of lads in your ears. Gunsmoke was spreading eerily over the land down there like mist on a childhood morning. Luke shivered to see it, the white smoke coming from the poplar trees.

‘Air cover?’ he said.

‘Air cover coming in,’ Bosh said. ‘The Yanks are on it. Ops says stay up high: they’re going to scoop the valley and fill it with cannon.’ The men of 5 Platoon were firing and reloading and Luke heard barks of excitement as they shouldered the wall and poked their bang-sticks over the top. A single shot came whizzing over their heads and fucked into the side of a truck, which sent them wild. They were shouting and swearing and pushing at the wall. ‘Over there! Fucking Terry cunt at eleven o’clock. Doosh, get down! Get fucken down! You can see his fucking rag, man. Flange. In the gap to the right. Go for it. Smash the fuck out of him!’

Docherty at some point came up behind Luke and told him he

thought the major was pretending to be asleep. He was inside one of the vehicles, crouched down.

‘What? Are you messing with me?’

‘He’s in the Vector.’

‘What you talking about? Get him out here: he needs to direct this shit and support the boys.’

‘He threw up.’

‘Are you fucken having me on, Leper?’

‘No, sir. He’s not well.’

In seconds the boys would notice. Luke knew they would notice and he feared their bottle might collapse if they heard the major was hanging back in the van during a fire-fight. Yet he knew something was wrong with Scullion and he’d felt it since they left Bastion. ‘Holy fuck,’ Luke said. ‘Am I medicine man to the whole platoon?’