Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

Scullion led his own platoon over the hill. They could see the floodlit dam and he wanted to press home. ‘If you haven’t got a wife or a child, follow me,’ he said. The boys turned to Luke and he shrugged and stared into the poplar trees and the centre of Kajaki Sofla. It was either a slow or a fast descent but you had to get there. A commander came up and a mortar brigade and they took up positions and started shelling. The directive was to

repel incoming fire, then to shell into enemy positions and move forward, taking the fight down to the insurgents who controlled access to the dam. Within seconds of the rounds going over, the return fire was brutal. There was smoke on all sides and bullets tearing past or thudding into the ground. Out there, somewhere in front of them, a machine-gun was being fired so furiously by one of the Canadians it glowed orange in the dark. Scullion feared it might give away their position, but the enemy was too chaotic. He snapped down the night-vision goggles on his helmet and assessed the activity on the road and around the buildings. He spotted a gap and began firing tracer rounds towards it, which gave the platoon a bead on where to direct their fire.

‘Go on, my son,’ shouted Lennox to the Canadian. ‘Go on. Give the fucktards a pounding.’

‘I’ve got disco-leg over here,’ Dooley said. ‘Fucking dizzy I’m tellin’ you. Let’s go!’

‘Don’t move forward yet, Doosh. Wait for the signal.’

‘What we waiting for?’

‘An order, Dooley.’

Red tracer fire streaked across the hills and fell prettily into the town. The arcs of red and green appeared more sluggish than they were, like an illusion of movement, a strobe, out across the hills and into the static night. But down there in Kajaki Sofla the bullets arrived as a hail of ripping metal. Car windscreens exploded and copper bowls ricocheted down the alleyways. The enemy manned its own batteries from the rooftops and their rockets scudded over the inclines, shearing the trees, falling short for the most part and lying phosphorescent in the fields. He looked up, they all looked up, and suddenly the pattern in the air was not a light show but a constellation of death. Luke wasn’t a gamer as

he watched the fire but a man seeing action in real time, a miasma of efforts and consequences. He met the realisation calmly on the hillside as the guns blazed and the boys shouted into the dark. He looked up and experienced a short invasion of mortality and a surge of adrenalin. He was just a man and he faced what was coming with a singleness of heart. He knew standing there that the string of lights began and ended in fear.

He took his soldiers down the irrigation ditch and found cover behind the rocks. Enemy mortars were exploding just in front of them and they held fast, while troops from other regiments ran ahead and took up position. Luke knew where he was. A sense of documentary reality came over him as he pressed his face into the rock and waited his turn to take the boys forward. His breath was short and he saw jackals scattering higher up. He heard the shouts of the other soldiers as they stormed into the gully, moving in formation according to their training, and as he heard them he thought of the geography around each man.

They were near the street. Every soldier had his rifle raised and was picking off targets below. With goggles down, Luke could see the enemy scurrying from one building to another. Fire appeared at the windows of the engine house above the dam. In the final push off the hill, the enemy had a clear shot into the ground in front of the allied soldiers, the last 200 metres leading down to the road and the end of all hope for that day’s insurgents. The allies were all over that part of the hill, shelling the hell out of the engine house and rocketing the vehicles on the ground. At the final clearing, Luke was making ready to go forward, listening to instructions from the commander on the radio, when suddenly, without warning, on his left-hand side, Major Scullion came dashing out from behind a clump of rocks. He was firing

his assault weapon and roaring in a blur. ‘Charlie!’ shouted Luke. ‘We can’t cover you from there, get back.’

‘Major!’ screamed Flannigan.

‘What’s he doing?’ Dooley said on the radio.

‘Hold back.’

‘Jesus fucken Christ,’ Flannigan said.

The radio was going mad. ‘What’s the fucken matter?’ a voice said. A mortar landed a short distance in front of where Scullion ran and Luke saw the shrapnel tear up a tree and Scullion was down. The shouting increased and suddenly the ANA troops led by Docherty and the 1st Royal Western team surged down onto the road. They pushed forward and the explosions were massive and the sniper fire cracked out, then the Apaches came in and suddenly the engine house was gone. The whole platoon tumbled over the rocks like a body of water, except for Luke and Flannigan, who held back and took advantage of the air cover and the Terry batteries going silent to rush into the clearing. They found Scullion sitting as a child might sit in a sandpit, planted on his bottom with his legs out, except that his right leg was severed and lying apart from him. The other leg was a mess. He sat with his eyes wide open to the scene before him, smoke rising from the rags of his trousers and his hands down flat.

‘Jesus, mother of God,’ Flannigan said.

‘You’re all right,’ Luke said. He rubbed the blood out of Scullion’s eyes and reached for his meds. Fingers were missing on Scullion’s right hand but he continued to stare out and pick at the rags of his trousers. He was shaking as he saw the leg a few feet away and touched the sheared, bloody bone of his knee. The bullets had stopped coming and it was weirdly quiet up there, the dark about them and Scullion murmuring, which seemed a good

sign, while the men tried to keep him from passing out. ‘Look,’ said Flannigan, ‘Jimmy-Jimmy’s here. We’re all here.’

‘What’s the score with these trees?’ Scullion said.

Luke stabbed the morphine needle into the major’s stomach. He returned from some place in his head and was again the boy in training. He took charge and had the old logistical zeal, the clarity of thought. He pulled out the field dressing and ripped it open with his teeth. Scullion looked up at him and smiled. ‘You’re a bad soldier.’

‘Come on, sir. You’re going to be all right. Hold my hand ya auld fucken wanker that you are.’

‘Come on, Charlie. Keep your eyes open,’ Flannigan said. ‘We’re not having a kip out here. Come on.’

Scullion had stopped feeling around his knee and his smile continued as Luke radioed for a stretcher. They were down from the convoy in minutes and the medic from the parachute regiment said one of the boys was religious and good at prayers. ‘Don’t be fucken daft,’ Luke said. ‘He’s going to be fine.’ One of the guys lifted Scullion’s torn-off leg by the boot and wrapped it up in a piece of plastic.

‘You’re great, now. Okay, fella. Just keep the head,’ Flannigan said. ‘Keep it together, sir. Jimmy-Jimmy’s here and the boys are coming up for a fucken smoke in a minute. Dooley wants to tell you about that moose of his, the bird he’s going to marry because she’s a staff nurse.’

Scullion was lying on the stretcher and his face was grey. Luke wiped his brow and tried to say everything was cool, they’d soon be out of the zone. The major’s smile went cold after a moment and he started whispering. ‘

Or had I but riches and money in store

.’

‘Come on, sir.’

‘Cop on!’ Flannigan said. ‘Give us one of your songs. Give us a few verses, ya mean bastard.’

‘It’s there on the banks of the lovely Bann river,’