The Eternal War

CHAPTER 44

2001, somewhere in Virginia

The tea was good. Strong and steaming. Liam gulped it down despite the heat scorching his throat. He hadn’t realized just how thirsty he was.

A brazier glowed in the middle of the field — a harvested field, rows of severed stalks flattened by army boots and the hoofs of two dozen one-ton huffalos, now tethered together in a surly huddle of muscle and hide, lowing and snorting.

Four soldiers stood guard, staring out into the darkness, the rest of the platoon wrapped in thick woollen ponchos. Most of them, used to the rigours of army life, were taking full advantage of the few hours of dark left and already fast asleep.

Captain McManus reached for the metal pot hanging from a metal frame over the glowing coals in the brazier. He topped up Liam’s enamel mug.

‘Thank you.’

‘My favourite time of the day,’ said McManus as he sipped his tea. ‘The few hours before dawn. There’s a wonderful tone to the sky just before sunrise. Especially such places like Asia Minor.’ He shrugged. ‘Afghanistan … very nice. The sky’s almost a vanilla colour before dawn.’

‘It’s almost always a grey dawn in Cork,’ said Liam.

‘Ahhh … now.’ McManus grinned and wagged a finger. ‘I knew there was a slice of Irish in your accent, Liam O’Connor. Just couldn’t quite place it.’

‘Well, some of it’s rubbed off. Recently, I’ve been living — sort of — with a girl from Boston.’ He shrugged. ‘And a girl from India.’

McManus looked at him, cocked his head curiously. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you really are quite the strangest fellow I’ve met in a good long time.’

Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘You seem, I don’t know — you may laugh at this — you seem to me like a Rip van Winkle. As if you’ve slept all your life. How is it that you seem to know so little of world affairs? Do you not read the papers?’

‘Like I said, me and Bob, we’ve been away in a priory. On our own. Me mother died recently so we came home to care for Sal. And, well, the three of us finally decided to … uh … to see some of the world together, you know?’

‘Well, you’ve not chosen the best place in the world to start your travels, Liam. The American War here may have ground to a halt in recent years, but …’ McManus looked cautiously around before continuing with a slightly lowered voice. ‘There are rumours flying about that that’s going to change.’

Liam perked up, his eyes off the smouldering coals. ‘What do you mean?’

McManus stroked his smooth chin. ‘It’s no big secret, Liam. This particular war is losing popular support back home. The British people are weary of it. War. It’s all anyone in Britain has known.’ McManus, warmed enough by the brazier, unbuttoned his tunic collar. ‘We have so many different wars going on at the moment, you understand? We’re fighting separatists in northern India, bandit militias in our African colonies, tribal war-bands in Afghanistan, Persia. I can’t tell you how many dusty little backwaters my lads and I have seen action in.’

He shook his head sadly, his eyes lost in the glowing embers. ‘And it’s always the same brutality, the same mindless cruelty. One tribe of savages hacking the next to bits. And always, always, it’s the women and children who die first. I … I’ve seen things, Liam, some quite horrible things.’

Liam regarded the young officer’s face, saw eyes that all of a sudden looked far older than they should. ‘You sound like you’ve seen more than enough fighting.’

McManus shrugged. ‘I can fight any number of battles. I can stand on a battlefield alongside my men and stare down another army,’ he smiled. ‘I’m a soldier, that’s exactly what I’m trained for. But …’

‘But?’

‘But … it’s the evil, it’s the sheer cold hate I see in our colonies, Liam … the savagery. They’re not even fighting us half the time; they’re too busy settling old tribal scores. Odd that, isn’t it? You’d think the people in these far places would unite together to fight the British redcoats. But they don’t …’ His words trailed to silence and for a while they listened to the wheezing and snoring of two dozen men asleep on the field.

‘I do sometimes wonder why we bother to keep this empire of ours. Why we’re there. It’s not like these places want the law and order we try to bring to them. They seem to relish their barbarity, what they do to each other. You can’t educate these people.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a nasty situation.’

‘Aye, well, I find it’s usually because some rich and powerful fella somewhere’s making money out of any nasty situation.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s probably why you and your lads are all over the place.’

McManus shrugged. ‘Perhaps. There’s always money to be made in a war zone.’ He finished his tea. ‘I do wonder why we’re in all these blasted places. When I lose men and I have to write home to their mothers or wives about how they died courageously for a good cause …’

‘You wonder what that good cause is?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘You know, a part of me says our boys should all return home. Leave these savages to it. If hacking each other to pieces is what they want, then who are we to impose our ways on them? But then … then, I remind myself that the ones who end up suffering the most are the children. When you see it for yourself, Liam … when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, it’s hard to walk away.’

‘But is it not wrong that you’re there in the first place?’ Liam cocked a brow. ‘There was plenty lads I knew who didn’t have much good to say about the British.’

‘For good or bad, we’re in the situation we’re in, and the truth of it is, Liam, we’re beginning to lose control of our colonies. We need more boots on the ground in Africa, in Asia Minor, in the Far East, and we can afford less boots on the ground over here.’

‘Does that mean …’ Liam looked at him. ‘Does that mean your side’s about to surrender?’

McManus looked at him pointedly. His silence was weighted.

‘So, hang on …’ Liam had heard some of the men earlier this evening muttering something about their regiment’s hasty redeployment to America. ‘That’s why you’re over here … to finish the war?’

McManus’s head tilted, the slightest of nods. ‘Our lads are stretched far too thinly. I fancy this particular war is one our government wants to be done with once and for all.’ He ran a hand through his blond hair, pushing a stray tress from his chiselled face.

‘A final push by the South … and then, I suspect, a hastily negotiated peace.’