Read Online Steven Pressfield by The Afghan Campaign - Free Book Online Page A

self-isolation. “We’re all thinking the same thing,” Lucas says. “‘What have I gotten myself into? Can I endure it? Will it drive me mad?’ I see it on all our faces; we’re running schemes in our heads: ‘How can I get out? What act will it take to get me sent home?’”
    â€œNot all of us,” says Boxer. Rags and Flea back him up.
    â€œWhat about you, Matthias? How can you endure this?”
    â€œMy father and brothers,” I respond with truth, though I have not even thought about it before this moment. All three are warriors and heroes. I would sooner die than prove unworthy of them. Shame at my failure in the first village (and other acts of reluctance and irresolution since then) has made me, if anything, even harder on myself—to banish doubt, to be a soldier, to reject all such arguments as my friend voices now. “We can’t let ourselves think that way. This is war, Lucas!”
    â€œYes,” my friend answers. “But what kind of war?”

BOOK TWO
    A New Kind of War

11.
    Alexander enters from the wing and mounts to the stage with a single athletic bound. A sigh expels from the company. There he is!
    Twenty-six days’ trek has taken us to Phrada, southern Afghanistan. On our right, the column skirts the Dasht-i-Margo, the Desert of Death. To the left ascend the foothills of the Paropamisus (“that over which the eagle cannot fly”) and, beyond, the shoulders of the Hindu Kush. We can see the peaks a hundred miles off, already mantled with snow. Here, on the military highway, the grit underfoot is blistering. The night crawls with adders and scorpions.
    It is autumn. The Wind of a Hundred and Twenty Days has begun. For four days in Phrada, our companies—those Macks who will be integrated into the regular corps—are assembled at dawn to be addressed by our king. For four days Alexander doesn’t show. We stand down each time, to hunker wretchedly in the furnace-blast of the gale.
    What makes Afghanistan so miserable is there’s no shelter. The wind howls out of the mountains with not a twig to break its rush. Terrain is spectacular, but its beauty, if you can call it that, is stern and unforgiving. No trees intercept the rain, which descends, when it does, in volumes unimaginable. In the hot season you bind covers round every surface of metal exposed to the sun. To touch them unprotected blisters you to the bone. Now comes the wind.
    To trek in such a gale is like marching in a tunnel. The universe contracts to the cylinder between your muffled eyes and the rucksack of the man in front of you. Where are we? As usual, nobody tells us. On a downgrade somewhere east of Lake Seistan, a colorful-looking fellow overhauls the column, driving a two-mule wagon. “Halloo, the highway!” he bawls, trying to use his downhill momentum to work through the jam. We are jostled onto the shoulder. The tourist is a chronicler, one of the cohort of freeloading correspondents who have attached themselves to Alexander’s party, pledging to record for posterity all exploits of the expedition. Soldiers love and hate these half-obol Homers, whom they perceive as spectating from safety upon that stage where they, the troops, bleed real blood. Still they are here with us, these ink-mice, eating the same dust and shaking the same serpents out of their boots. Besides, they know the news.
    â€œHey, wax-scratcher!” Tollo hails the fellow. “What’s the story!”
    The chronicler brightens, hearing our sergeant’s brogue. “Are you Macks?” The column is all Achaeans and Lycians. “What are you doing back here?”
    â€œYou tell us, you’re the one in the know.”
    â€œWhere are you from?”
    This is the question all correspondents ask soldiers. It makes suckers of us, as it must every other mob of witless scuffs. We shout out our hometowns, as if we believe our new crony will record them