Just Finished Reading: The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield (FP: 2006) [458pp] 

Greece, 330BC. With his two older brothers in Alexander’s army his role and his duty, which he knew all too well, was to stay at home and help his parents run the farm. But Matthias had heard too many stories of foreign lands and the glory of fighting there. Plus of course was the opportunity for plunder which, he was sure, would help the farm far more than the strength of his back. So, against his parents' wishes and with a few friends in tow he headed to the local recruiting area and signed on in the hope and expectation of joining Alexander’s victorious drive across the East. As the new recruits marched further and further away from their homes the stories they had heard around the fireplace began to seem more and more like illusions. They had grown up on tales of armoured phalanxes clashing on open fields but this fight was something else entirely. The great Persian Empire had indeed been brought to its knees by the famous might of the Greek phalanx but Alexander had moved on and was now fighting at the edge of the world itself – Afghanistan. There the enemy had no massed armies to fight, no men dressed in bronze to face across a plain – there would be no great battles, no clash of armour in that hostile place. There, amongst the mountains, the enemy came in the night to kill unobservant sentries, to access tents to kill men where they slept, they rolled rocks from high on mountain passes to bury men alive without even seeing who they were fighting. They laid traps and fell upon those who were stupid enough to walk into them. If seen at all the Afghans kept their distance waiting for the opportunity to strike. In Afghanistan every waking, every resting, every sleeping moment was one of tension, of waiting for the knife to be drawn, the arrow to be heard before it struck flesh, waiting for the sound of men fighting and dying for a worthless patch of sand and rock. It was not the war that Matthias or his friends had imagined, but it was the war they had and, the way things were going, it was the war that would kill them all long before Alexander had the victory he so passionately desired. 

I’ve been planning on reading this for a while now. I’d read a few of this author’s works and have always been impressed by his attention to detail and the wonderful historical ‘feel’ he manages to bring to his storytelling. Overall this was an excellent read. If you have been paying attention to recent events (or even casually keeping touch with the allied ‘adventure’ in Afghanistan over the last 20 years) you’ll have a pretty good idea of the tone the author was going for. It did feel, at least at times, a little anachronistic in that, despite being in the Ancient World of 330 BC the whole thing felt incredibly modern. The Greek and other soldiers ‘talked’ and thought as you might imagine (or even know) a grunt in any of today’s allied forces would talk and think. The only difference was that in the novel the armour was made of bronze rather than Kevlar and the Greek soldiers faced their Afghan counterparts without the advantage of air-support. Honestly if the author had casually mentioned an air-strike or ‘sniper assist’ I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. The storytelling is visceral, real and emotional. Not only do you get attached to the Greek ‘grunts’ but the author manages to get the reader to begin to understand the Afghan position and even provide some very interesting insights into Afghan culture which, again, felt very relevant to today. This was a very impressive balls and blood, ‘sandles on the ground’, Classical military epic that will keep you in its grip from beginning to end. I enjoyed it immensely and raced through it. One of the highlights of the year. Definitely recommended to all historical combat fans.