The Afgan Campaign

by Steven Pressfield

  The correspondent’s name is Costas. He has the dandy’s look of an actor or musician; the kind of good-looking, glib fellow who has never plowed a row in his life. Like many of his colleagues, he affects a soldierly aspect; he wears a military cloak and a desert cap with a floppy brim. “Why don’t you write a book about us? ” Rags calls to him. “We’re the real army.”

  “I would,” the chronicler laughs. “But who’d read it?”

  The column pushes south to Phrada. Finally, on the fifth dawn, our king’s standard appears. Royal pages and knights of the Life Guard shuttle us again into a stockade in the lee of a scarp, a site that had been a ring for horse auctions. The gale relents. Alexander enters.

  It is as if the sun has been lowered in on a rope. All gloom is dispelled; the daylight, which had been flat and featureless, turns golden bright. I have not expected our lord to be so handsome. He wears a plain cavalry cloak with no insignia of rank or kingship. He is taller than I had expected. I think: This must have been what it was like to behold Perseus or Bellerophon, or Achilles himself. Citations erupt and will not cease despite the king’s extended arms and his calls for silence. He grins. He looks impossibly young. His athletic bearing augments the impression of boyishness, and his clean-shaven good looks enlarge the sense of youth and vigor.

  “Gentlemen!” We read his lips, though no sound can be heard above the clamor. “My friends, please…”

  When the uproar abates, Alexander welcomes us, informing us that we are no longer replacements. We are soldiers of the expeditionary force. We shall commence drawing combat pay from the date of our arrival at Artacoana, and all expenses of the out-march will be reimbursed. We will be assigned to regiments. I witness for the first time that faculty of the king’s, which has been so much remarked upon, that is, his knowledge of men’s names and faces. He scans the foremost ranks, greeting fellows by name and patronymic and remarking with an easy jest upon older brothers or fathers who have served with the corps from its inception and exhorting them, the newcomers, to live up to their elders’ fame. “Believe me, brothers, there is still plenty of glory to be won-and plenty of loot!”

  The hall erupts again. Alexander speaks briefly of the current campaign and lays out his design for the operations to come. The fight, he says, will soon be over. All that remains is the pursuit of an enemy who is already on the run and the killing or capturing of commanders who are already beaten. We will be out of here by fall, he pledges, and on to India, whose riches and plunder will dwarf even the vast treasure of Persia. “That said,” Alexander adds, “no foe, however primitive, should be taken lightly, and we shall not commit that error here.”

  At once his expression becomes grave. He strides to the prow of the platform, which had been the auctioneer’s stand, and steps out onto its cornice, as if to get as close as possible to his neophyte troopers.

  “My friends, brief as your sojourn in the Afghan kingdoms has been, you cannot have failed to notice that we are fighting, here, a different kind of war. You may feel, some of you, that this is not what you signed up for. These are not the fields of glory of which you dreamed. Understand: The actions we take in this campaign are as legitimate as those enacted in any other. This is not conventional warfare. It is unconventional. And we must fight it in an unconventional way.

  “Here the foe will not meet us in pitched battle, as other armies we have dueled in the past, save under conditions of his own choosing. His word to us is worthless. He routinely violates truces; he betrays the peace. When we defeat him, he will not accept our dominion. He comes back again and again. He hates us with a passion whose depth is exceeded only by his patience and his capacity for suffering. His boys and old men, even his women, fight us as combatants. They do not do this openly, however, but instead present themselves as innocents, even as victims, seeking our aid. When we show compassion, they strike with stealth. You have all seen what they do to us when they take us alive.

  “Please note, my friends, that I have made good and generous offers to the native peoples. I intend them no harm. I would make them our allies and friends. I abhor this kind of fighting. If an alternative existed, I would seize it at once. But the foe will not have it. We have seen his methods. We have no choice but to adapt to them.”

  The king speaks of will-our own and the enemy’s. The foe, he declares, has no chance of overcoming us in the field. But if he can sap our resolution by his doggedness, his relentlessness; if he can appall us by his acts of barbarity, he can, if not defeat us, then prevent us from defeating him. Our will must master the enemy’s. Our resolve must outlast his.

  “The types of operations we are now compelled to wage; methods of pursuit, of capture and interrogation; the treatment of so-called noncombatants; all actions we take in this theater-these are war too. And you are the warriors who must perform these acts. That said, I am not insensitive to the fact that numbers of you have fathers and brothers who have sought and found glory in an entirely different kind of war, and that you may not have the stomach for this sterner, less illustrious type. It is not my object to compel you. Nor will I force a voice vote here on the spot, for I know that, with the influence of your comrades upon you, many will cry out with enthusiasm for any course I suggest, and this will intimidate others and carry them, like one of these swift Afghan rivers, along a course they do not in their hearts wish to follow.

  “Therefore let this assembly conclude. Let the evening and the morrow pass. Take time, each of you, to consult his own heart, to confer with his mates. Decide what you want to do. Do you, then, speak in private with your sergeants and warrant officers. If you believe you cannot participate in this war, either the corps will find other ways to use you, in supply, support, or garrison service, or, if you so desire, you may join one of the columns returning home, with no hard feelings and full pay for time in service, including the trek to Macedon. Full pay and bonuses for those who remain.”

  At this, the assembly explodes. Alexander again calls for silence.

  “But if you elect to remain, my friends, know what I demand of you: that you commit yourselves wholeheartedly to this undertaking. No grumbling. No holding back. Fight alongside your officers and comrades; fight alongside your king. Know that it is my object to bring into subjection all lands formerly held by the throne of Persia. That means India. It means Afghanistan. Make no mistake, this country is vital to our cause. It constitutes the gateway to the Punjab, the indispensable highway between West and East; it must be subdued before we can move on.

  “More important perhaps, the Bactrian plain has been for centuries the invasion route for Scythian nomads. These barbarians have ravaged this country again and again, sweeping down out of the Wild Lands to the north and fleeing back into them. Along this frontier, two hundred years ago, Cyrus the Great erected a wall of forts to keep out these savages. Here he himself fell, cut down by the horse tribesmen we call Massagetae. He failed. We shall not. We will pursue the barbarian into his sanctuaries and strike such terror that he will beg for peace. This country must be secured. That is what you are here to do, and that is what we shall do. When the job is done, we will cross the Hindu Kush into India, where I hope to find and to deliver into your hands not only wealth beyond even that which we now possess, but a more honorable form of enemy and a nobler kind of war.

  “But before India comes Afghanistan.

  “That’s it, my friends. Get some meat in your bellies. Find a place to rest your bones. I know the trials of this theater are not what you expected. But you are proud sons of a celebrated nation. As your fathers and brothers have overcome every force of man or nature, so shall you, never fear. Rest today. Tomorrow you will join your regiments.”

  12

  We are assigned-Lucas and me and our mates Rags and Flea-to the regiment of Foot Companions under Coenus and the Persian lord Artabazus, or, more precisely, to this and its “flying column.” We fall in for reconfiguration the next day. Alexander has already moved on; his fast units have m
ade away south for the Helmand Valley and what will become the city of Kandahar.

  Coenus’s taxis is number two in the army, behind only Alexander’s elite brigades. The phalanx regiments stand in a hierarchy of precedence and prestige. In conventional order of battle, the senior brigade would hold the post of honor on the extreme right of the line, abutting the Royal Guards and Alexander’s Companion cavalry. In this new war, honor post means being handed the toughest and most hazardous operations, against the sternest elements of the foe.

  This is not good news. For us rookies it’s worse. Mired in rank sixteen, Lucas and I are condemned to eat dirt all day in column, stagger into camp hours after dark, when all hot chow is gone and every dry bedding spot preempted. As “new onions,” we are slaves to every trooper senior in rank (which means the entire regiment) and obliged to mend his kit, scrounge for his forage and firewood, and stand his watch as well as our own. Worse, we are sick. Lucas ails with piles and diarrhea. I’ve got worms, and the soles of my feet are ribbons. To top off our misery, we have lost Flag, Tollo, and Stephanos, who have been reassigned to their original units. What can we do? In desperation, we approach our new Color Sergeant, whom the men call Thatch for the dense gray brush atop his crown, and, advertising ourselves as superior riders from cavalry-renowned Apollonia, request transfer to the unit’s mounted scouts.

  “So you’re horsemen, are you?” our new chief inquires.

  We’re centaurs!

  “Outstanding,” says he-and assigns us as muleteers with the baggage.

  Now we are truly screwed. As wranglers, we must rise three hours before dawn to rig and pack out the train, trek in the column’s bung all day, then toil till midnight putting up the mules and asses. The Wind of a Hundred Twenty Days has, by our count, ninety-one still to go. Despair would finish us, except for the miracle awaiting in Kandahar.

  My brother.

  Elias finds me in the city. Or to be exact, Stephanos finds him. Together they track me and Lucas down in the bazaar.

  What joy to see him! Elias beams. “Can this be our own Little Philosopher?” He holds me at arm’s length, admiring my growth (I was fifteen the last time he saw me), then wraps me in a bone-crushing clinch. My brother weeps. I do too. “I never expected,” he says, “to see you alive.”

  “Nor I you.”

  My brother is a celebrity. Two Silver Lions and one Gold stud his scarlet cloak of Companion cavalry; his belt of snakeskin holds so many “spits”-iron rivets, one for each enemy slain-it seems made of metal. His mount (his seventh, he reports, since leaving Macedon) is a gorgeous chestnut mare called Meli, “Honey,” with a white blaze and four white stockings. He has two more in his string, geldings even handsomer, and a gorgeous Afghan mistress to boot; I will meet her tonight, when we celebrate. Elias, it seems, has only one more day in the city. Then he and his company-he is a warrant officer of Forward Operations-must head north up the valley of the Arghandab River, into the mountains, seeking alliances and pledges of supplies from the local maliks.

  “Then the army is going over?” asks Lucas, confirming rumors we’ve been hearing for days.

  Alexander’s aim, Elias bears out, is to cross the Hindu Kush before snow closes the passes. He will invade Afghanistan from the south-not the north, as previously planned-and attack Bessus and Spitamenes on the Bactrian plain. “Get yourself a fleece wrapper and stout snow boots. The lowest pass, they say, is two miles high.”

  Elias leaves us in the market. Our chore that day, assigned by Thatch, is to hire sixteen new mules. “Get me beasts that can carry a load,” our chief has instructed Lucas and me that morning.

  “Yes, Color Sergeant.”

  “And, lads…”

  We turn back.

  “Pick some that look tasty. In case we need to eat ’em.”

  The column, as configured now, employs thirty thousand horses and mules. But all have been hired out of Phrada and villages along the western track. Their owners won’t let us take them over the mountains, fearing to lose them to the cold or to bandits, and they won’t go up with them themselves. So the corps’ forward scouts put out the word for more. The region responds. On the littoral before the village of Gram Tal, the livestock market sprawls for miles. Tents and bichees — three-sided flies, stitched of goatskin-stretch in avenues like a city. Every mule, camel, and yaboo for a hundred miles has been collected, with their owners putting them out to rent.

  What, you ask, is the difference between a horse and a mule? A mule is easier to catch. This is no small thing when packing out in the dark. Mules are better-tempered than horses. They form attachments; you can picket the leader and leave the others free. Mules’ front legs are longer than horses’; they don’t balk at downhills, and their bones don’t break as easily. Mules are less prone to panic. A horse mired in a snowdrift will burst its heart thrashing to get free; a mule has the sense to stand still and wait for help. Mules are more headstrong, though. A horse is loyal; if you fall and break a leg, a good mount will stick with you. A mule will give you that look that says, “Sorry, mate”-and make away at the hot trot.

  If you wonder what makes Alexander’s army superior to all rivals, among other things, it is this: No one ever tells you anything. You have to figure everything out for yourself. This promotes initiative. In other armies, scuffs like Lucas and me would be paralyzed to take action absent superiors’ orders. In Alexander’s corps, a sergeant is as ready to seize responsibility as a captain, and a private as a sergeant.

  Alas, this self-initiative works against us now, as every other rear-ranker of the baggage train, dispatched on the same errand as we, either pulls rank or plain chucks us out of the public way. We are novices; the vets eat us alive. Worse, a column of twelve thousand rested troops, including all four phalanx brigades from Ecbatana, have here caught up with the army. They need mules too. They swamp the marketplace. Lucas and I are supposed to return to camp with sixteen animals. By day’s end our string numbers eight of the scruffiest plugs in Asia; we have no idea where to scrounge up the second eight. The region has been picked clean. To add to our troubles, we’ve had to lay out double to an Afghan stock-trader named Ashnagur, whom we call Ash, who is reaming us royally. Lucas and I have barely enough cash for two more mules. How will we get eight? Ash takes pity on us, invites us into his bichee, which he shares with a clan of at least twenty, for a feed of chicken and rice, with curds and plates of chupatties, flat bread, delivered by his wife or one of his daughters, we can’t tell which, as all we glimpse are her hands as she passes the meal through the half-open flap. We dine on carpets on the packed-dirt floor.

  “Mules can be expensive,” Ash observes.

  We tell him we are learning this.

  “Women are cheaper.”

  We don’t understand.

  Our host mimes the hefting of a cargo pack. “Three women can carry as much as one mule and eat only half. And at night in camp,” he grins, “you can get a leg over.”

  We find our way to my brother’s quarters two hours before midnight. Elias and two other Companions have rented a house in Gram Tal, the town that will become the city of Kandahar.

  The place is packed when we enter and booming with timbrel and kithara. Tapers light the hall. We can’t find Elias. On campaign there is no such thing as an andron, a room for men only. Here wives and lovers dine at their men’s shoulders. We run into Costas, the young correspondent we met on the track from Phrada. He becomes our guide. Four separate banquets pack the apartments; our countrymen are so blind and so affable, it takes us a quarter of an hour to work through to the rear chamber, where my brother and his mates host their salon.

  The room is low and broad and laid out Afghan-style, no couches or chairs, everyone on carpets on the floor. Macks in various stages of inebriation litter the chamber, some passed out in corners, others sprawled against walls. The main body surrounds a low table, animated with conversation. Elias hails us. We are crunched in beside him and his lady. Costas carries a bumper o
f wine, which he contributes to the krater, to round applause. The troopers are all from F.O., Forward Operations; every man swanks the black-and-tan scarf that marks him as Reconnaissance.

  My brother bawls introductions. At his back stands an Afghan shikari. The word means “mountain wolf.” These are guides, ferocious-looking specimens who accompany all forward cavalry. I have never seen one up close. The man is between fifty and sixty, lean as a reed, with great black mustaches that he keeps rigid with paraffin. His trousers are baggy khurgans bloused into lambskin boots, with vest, jacket, and pettu, the long woolen wrap that serves as greatcoat, wind shelter, and sleeping roll. He carries the standard three Afghan knives, tucked into a crimson sash round his waist, and packs as well two javelins of cornel wood with blades of iron. Elias makes no introductions; to do so apparently would violate proper form. I know from his letters that Elias’s familiarity with the northern tribes is extensive. He has fought Bactrian and Sogdian cavalry in the Babylonian and Persian campaigns, and, serving after victory as a courier to them and later an envoy, has brought in numbers for hire in special units under Alexander. Elias owns acquaintance with the two great barons, Spitamenes and Oxyartes, who ride with the pretender Bessus now on the Bactrian side of the mountains. He says nothing of this throughout the evening, nor do I observe him exchange a single word with his guide, though the man remains at his shoulder-standing, never taking a seat-all night.

  I beg Elias to pull strings and get me and Lucas included in his company; we will serve even as grooms. With a laugh my brother dismisses this, citing several transparent pretexts. Clearly he is protecting me. Forward Operations is dangerous. “Drink up,” he shouts. “We’ll talk later.”

  I am astonished at the quantities of spirits my brother pours down. In Macedon, Elias was always the most moderate of topers. Now he is tight as a clam. They all are. Liquor is hard, distilled from rye and barley, fiery enough to gag a horse. I try to keep up but the room starts spinning. My brother sees and grins with delight. Sozzled as he is, he has lost no sense. When he rises to pour a libation, not a drop spills.