Book Review: The Afghan Campaign

A couple of weeks ago my old friend from the Ranger Batt recommended I read The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield. This was startling to me if only because when I knew Wheeler he was not the type to recommend reading, much less a book. If he did read it was only field manuals or the Ranger Handbook. This new book he recommended sounded like a thick non-fiction account of war like Not A Good Day to Die or We Were Soldiers Once and Young. Something meaty and deep, political and controversial. I'm somewhat happy to note that Wheeler has not changed much.

As soon as I started the book I remembered an incident that occurred in the middle of the night while pulling guard in a patrol base in the middle of Fort Lewis. A book landed in my hands, a fictional account of the Battle of Thermopylae from the point of view of a Greek soldier. I don't remember if I finished the book or not, but I remember I didn't like it for the same reason I don't like Michener books; I never know what I should believe and what I shouldn't.

The Afghan Campaign is a fictional account of Alexander the Greats campaign in Afghanistan. To say the least the book is stark and startling in its account of both the war and the people fighting it. Several themes jump out from the pages, among them the fact that soldiers should not think, only act. Several times throughout the book, the hero Matthias is caught by his leaders as he ponders the war and his actions. They remonstrate him by glowering and saying "you're thinking again." Another obvious theme, the brutality of the Afghanis and their morals. I believe that more Afghan children die at the hands of their fathers, and siblings at their hands of their brothers or sisters, than do die because of Matthias.

The first instance that the reader is shown of this difference in moral compass occurs when Matthias' leader Flag is about to cut off the hand of a young boy because the father wont confess to having stolen Mattias' wallet. The entire family, save one small girl, is ready to sacrifice the boy's hand for the sake of keeping the wallet. Infact, throughout the book several children or siblings break the harsh moral code, and usually end up beaten or dead because of it. Pressfield says: "They are loyal and gay and kind and so corrupt that you cannot even get angry at them. To them a bribe is simply good manners, and paying someone off no more tha friendship and cosideration." At one point Mattias, having seen all of these horrors from the Afghans says, "One may be terrified of them or appalled by them, but it is impossible not to respect them." I found that line to be a stretch. The final theme is that of service and duty to ones unit. I was not at all surprised to find that not only was Pressfield a former Marine, but a Marine with combat duty in Iraq aided him in his writing of the novel.

I found Pressfield to be an incredibly vivid writer. Several lines caught my attention;

Describing Mattias walking through a market in the Middle East: "A man hung his purse next to his testicles and, after shaking hands with a stranger, checked to make sure both sacks were still where he had left them. "

Describing an attack on an Afghan village: "Our men vault this in scores, like water over the lip of a dam."

Describing journalists: "Still they are here with us, these ink-mice, eating the same dust and shaking the same serpents out of their boots."

He has a fine line about the difference between a horse and a mule: "A horse is loyal; if oyu 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."

He has a fabulous turn of phrase for dying that I had never heard before: "They’ll strip our corpses and jig over our bones – ours and however many other hundreds of our compatriots will have gone briskets-down before the column gets over these mountains."

When Matthias is excited to show off his new child he says: "Flag and stepahanos visit to inspect this newest campaigner. he salutes their entrance with a stupendous defecation. My friends acclaim its volume and manly stink. I could not be prouder if the child had produced a second Illead."

And finally, when Matthias is reunited with his horse that he loved, "Emotion overwhelms me. I: stroke my darlin's muzzle. I understand, even as my heat overflows with it, that my elation at her recovers is a surrogate for other losses, far keener and not yet made good. Beloved comrades for whom my heart cannot yet mourn; missing brothers for whom even now I seek. They all become one for me in the form of this dear animal, whom I believed I would never see again and who now, one horse out of five thouseand, has miraculously been delivered into my arms."

Throughout the book the reader expects trouble for Matthias, both in fighting and for his new wife and child. Sadly, the climax does not dissapoint. It comes swiftly and tragically and leaves the reader both vindicated in their distrust of the author has built around the Afghans and heart broken for Matthias.

Pressfield wrote two passages regarding the war that I felt might have resonated with Wheeler who is there fighting for us.

"A unit can work no more than two days in any direction; men and horses simply can’t carry enough water to get out and back. Native guides are useless. They all work for the enemy. An afghan who aids the invader returns to his village to find his wife and children butchered, or waiting themselves to buthcher him. The foe bested in a fight makes he getaway with ease while you in the chase must negotiate a tables of defiles and dry courses, knowing always that the enemy is a master of the feigned flight and the double-back ambush." When I read this I thought of Wheeler and how frustrated he must get.

And this one, more political than most, also more demoralizing, provided during a speech Pressfield has Alexander give: "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 duled in the past, save under considtions of his own choosing. His word to us is worthless. He routinely violates truces; betrays the peace. When we defeat him, he will no 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 capaticy for suffereing. 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 out aid. When we show comopassion, they strike with stealth. You have all see what they do to us when they take us alive.”

Thinking back, it may have been Wheeler who pressed that book into my hands all those years ago. I wish now I'd given it more of a chance. Based on The Afghan Campaign I would have liked it.