Spare

So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed. Naturally, I’d have preferred not to have that number on my military CV, on my mind, but by the same token I’d have preferred to live in a world in which there was no Taliban, a world without war. Even for an occasional practitioner of magical thinking like me, however, some realities just can’t be changed.

While in the heat and fog of combat, I didn’t think of those twenty-five as people. You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. You can’t really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to “other-ize” them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.

Another reality that couldn’t be changed.

Not to say that I was some kind of automaton. I never forgot being in that TV room at Eton, the one with the blue doors, watching the Twin Towers melt as people leaped from the roofs and high windows. I never forgot the parents and spouses and children I met in New York, clutching photos of the moms and dads who’d been crushed or vaporized or burned alive. September 11 was vile, indelible, and all those responsible, along with their sympathizers and enablers, their allies and successors, were not just our enemies, but enemies of humanity. Fighting them meant avenging one of the most heinous crimes in world history, and preventing it from happening again.

As my tour neared its end, around Christmas 2012, I had questions and qualms about the war, but none of these was moral. I still believed in the Mission, and the only shots I thought twice about were the ones I hadn’t taken. For instance, the night we were called in to help some Gurkhas. They were pinned down by a nest of Taliban fighters, and when we arrived there was a breakdown in communications, so we simply weren’t able to help. It haunts me still: hearing my Gurkha brothers calling out on the radio, remembering every Gurkha I’d known and loved, being prevented from doing anything.

As I fastened my bags and said my goodbyes I was honest with myself: I acknowledged plenty of regrets. But they were the healthy kind. I regretted the things I hadn’t done, the Brits and Yanks I hadn’t been able to help.

I regretted the job not being finished.

Most of all, I regretted that it was time to leave.

58.

I stuffed my Bergen full of dusty clothes, plus two souvenirs: a rug bought in a bazaar, a 30-mm shell casing from the Apache.

The first week of 2013.

Before I could get onto the plane with my fellow soldiers I went into a tent and sat in the one empty chair.

The obligatory exit interview.

The chosen reporter asked what I’d done in Afghanistan.

I told him.

He asked if I’d fired on the enemy.

What? Yes.

His head went back. Surprised.

What did he think we were doing over here? Selling magazine subscriptions?

He asked if I’d killed anyone.

Yes…

Again, surprised.

I tried to explain: It’s a war, mate, you know?

The conversation came around to the press. I told the reporter that I thought the British press was crap, particularly with regard to my brother and sister-in-law, who’d just announced that they were pregnant, and were subsequently being besieged.

They deserve to have their baby in peace, I said.

I admitted that my father had begged me to stop thinking about the press, to not read the papers. I admitted that I felt guilty every time I did, because it made me complicit. Everyone’s guilty for buying the newspapers. But hopefully no one actually believes what’s in them.

But of course they did. People did believe, and that was the whole problem. Britons, among the most literate people on the planet, were also the most credulous. Even if they didn’t believe every word, there was always that residue of wonder. Hmm, where there’s smoke there must be fire…Even if a falsehood was disproved, debunked beyond all doubt, that residue of initial belief remained.

Especially if the falsehood was negative. Of all human biases, “negativity bias” is the most indelible. It’s baked into our brains. Privilege the negative, prioritize the negative—that’s how our ancestors survived. That’s what the bloody papers count on, I wanted to say.

But didn’t. It wasn’t that kind of discussion. Wasn’t a discussion at all. The reporter was keen to move on, to ask about Vegas.

Naughty Harry, eh? Hooray Harry.

I felt a mix of complicated emotions about saying goodbye to Afghanistan, but I couldn’t wait to say goodbye to this chap.