Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

Luke screwed up his face. ‘But we’re not training the Plonkers, much as they fucken need it. We’re training the Fundies. Keep it clear in your heads: we’re the Operational Mentor Liaison Team.’

‘We’re their Sandhurst,’ Dooley said.

‘Whatever, Doosh.’

They rode along and the air got hotter. Private Lennox had

been up top for two hours with sand smacking him in the face and he was melting when he came down. They passed another stall. The boys’ tongues were hanging out for a cold drink but the boss said they couldn’t stop because every local fucker was probably a roadside bomb. ‘Best fucken army training in the world,’ he said, ‘and you crows are still unconvinced that water is better for you than cans of Fanta.’ Private Flannigan of fire team Delta saw on the gauge that it was fifty degrees inside the Vector and he clocked that Lennox had nearly passed out when he dropped down. The boys from Charlie team pulled off his armour and fanned him and pumped him full of water. Flannigan cleaned his face with a wet wipe and grinned. ‘You’re fucken burning up, our kid.’

Private Dooley removed the boy’s helmet. ‘I’ll just hop off the bus and get him a Ribena,’ he said.

‘Shut up, Dooley,’ Flannigan said. ‘It’s the South Armagh of Afghanistan out there, nothing but Terry Taliban waiting behind the wall to chop your balls off and send them back to your mammy.’

‘Bring it on, bitch,’ said Private Dooley, a big, smiling boy of eighteen with fleshy lips and a bent ear. Nothing surprised him. They all cheered and Lennox sat up. ‘He’s back!’ Dooley said.

‘You were fucken babblin’, man. The heat got to you.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Flannigan said. ‘That’s the way he always talks. A thick gypsy from Belfast, eh?’

‘Shut your face,’ Lennox said, then Flannigan reached inside his tunic and took out a Lambert & Butler, passing the cigarette to Lennox as the vehicle jolted and went on. It had been Lennox’s first tour the year before and Flannigan looked after him when they were pinned down together during a battle on the Pharmacy Road in Sangin. The boys in this section were close and they all

knew it. And the soldiers in the rest of the platoon, travelling behind, they knew it, too. The boys in A Section had their own language and said whatever they wanted.

‘What you got a thigh-holster for, man?’ asked Flannigan. He was from Liverpool and never got tired of mocking.

Dooley looked like he’d barely started to shave. His green eyes were bright and he used a lot of words, some of them wrong.

‘Shut yer face,’ he said. ‘This gear is highly appropriated.’

‘You mean “appropriate”,’ Luke said. ‘Get some more water inside you, Lennox. You’re dehydrated.’

Lennox’s red face was shining with sweat. ‘Have you seen Dooley’s thigh-holster, sir?’

‘You were out for the count a minute ago,’ Luke said. ‘Spark out. Couldn’t take the pace.’

The boys laughed and Luke smiled and turned away. ‘You just keep saving up for your big fat gypsy wedding,’ he said to Dooley.

‘Harsh,’ Dooley said. Then Luke studied the map. The boys loved it when the captain joined in: it made them feel lucky, grown-up, selected. ‘I’ve been thinking of inventing a new thing for the wedding,’ Dooley added. ‘Worst man. Like the opposite of best man. I was thinking of asking Lennox: he’s definitely first choice. He could make a speech proving he’s the biggest gobshite ever to leave the Falls Road.’

‘Your talk makes me proud of my regiment,’ Luke said.

‘Thank you, sir.

Veritas vos liberabit

.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’

‘Regimental motto,’ Flannigan said.

‘Onwards the 1st Royal Western,’ Dooley said to himself, looking down at their boots smeared in dirt. ‘The truth will set you free.’

Luke was always telling Major Scullion that his boys were the salt of the British army. Especially 5 Platoon. They were full of shite, he said, and they talked non-stop, but when it came to fighting these men were the bomb. Luke was a full ten years older than most of the platoon and had spent a lot of time with them at Camp Bastion and in Salisbury. The boys recognised Luke was a bit of a thinker but he wasn’t the careerist kind of officer. They never said it to his face, but they knew, they all knew, that his father had been a captain in the regiment and had died in Northern Ireland.

Sergeant Sean Docherty was driving the vehicle behind, carrying a group of men from the Afghan National Army. Docherty was quiet, thought Luke, a self-made officer who missed his wife and steadily avoided most of the banter around him. Luke was always conscious of the men, checking their positions, ensuring they were ready, and for him they constituted an unconscious world of faith and necessity. You go to sleep knowing these men might be the last thing between you and the shit. They stand up for you. They think your thoughts. They need what you need. He loved the banter and the way the banter brought the boys together. But he felt worried on the road to Maiwand that they were jumpy in advance of the mission. They weren’t coping well with the heat and their brains were soft from months spent doing nothing, killing some imagined enemy on screen, posting rubbish on YouTube, or lying under mosquito nets thinking hard about the car they’d buy if they ever got home.

The convoy stopped on Highway 1 and some of the ordnance blokes got out to check for roadside bombs. ‘That’s fine,’ Luke said to the three soldiers in the Vector, ‘you can get down. We’ve got half an hour. Try not to shit your pants. Eat the oranges but

not too many. This is Terry bandit country and we’re camping right in the middle of their spawn-point here, waiting for them to drop on us.’

‘2M2H?’ Dooley said.

‘No, Doosh. Not too much to handle. Don’t be a prick. I just don’t fancy my crack platoon getting wiped while sitting on their skinny wee arses eating tropical fruit. Keep your peepers open and do what the captain says, there’s a good lad.’

‘Roger that.’

The Royal Engineers had work to do on some of the convoy’s vehicles and the search for roadside bombs took longer than they thought, so they were stuck. Luke radioed to Sean in the vehicle behind, telling him to ask the ANA soldiers who knew the terrain if they had any clues about where the bombs might be. ‘They should do,’ said Sean’s crackling voice. ‘They probably planted half of them.’

LIGHTWEIGHT

Sitting against the trucks, shirts round their necks, the boys had smokes going. It was way too hot. ‘If you don’t know the difference between Death Metal and Thrash Metal,’ Lennox said, ‘you may as well just get out your fucken assault weapon and start blowing your tiny brains all over the fucken desert.’

‘He reasoned,’ Luke said.

‘I mean it, bitches. I can’t believe I’m turtling here in the sand with a bunch of fucken newbs with a low-ping connection to the universe — Dooley, Flange, look at the nick of them — and it’s Game On in this shithole and these fucken ’tards think that “The

Punishment Due” by Megadeth is an example of Thrash Metal. Cop on, bell-ends. Go up the front there and sell that shit to the Gobblers.’

‘What’s the Gobblers?’ Dooley asked.

‘The Grenadier Guards,’ Luke said.

‘Awesome. It’s all Royal Engineers up there,’ Dooley said.

‘The Chunkies,’ Lennox said. ‘A corps of Bennies up there with a single fucken standard grade and a metal ruler between them, pumping up tyres and thinking they’re God.’

‘Fuck them all, man. We got the battle honours.’

‘Fucken right,’ Flannigan said, leaning on the cabin door and closing his eyes. ‘But we’re the ones sitting here for hours going red pigs …’