In Basic Training, we were given a set of civilian clothes which had to be worn whenever we weren’t in uniform. It was another uniform to make us all the same, they said.

The barber’s clipper performed the same function. Week One saw new recruits stand in a long line outside the camp barbershop to get our one free haircut from the Army.

The barber was a fat bald man who enjoyed his power over us. He knew he could report us if we said anything funny to him. Sometimes he’d make us call him “Staff” even though he’d never put on a uniform. We resented him for that.

He’d call out, “Next!” as recruit after recruit went in with hair and left with a number-one buzz cut all over. The girls would walk past us giggling. The boys would leave the barbershop looking shocked and vulnerable like they’d just been neutered. The lads in the queue would tell those leaving that it didn’t look so bad because they felt sorry for them and were trying to keep their spirits up—one of the first signs of teamwork.

Some stood in the queue with short haircuts, thinking that would save them. They’d smile thinking they’d be spared, but they’d be shorn like everyone else. Some would laugh at their own hair reflected in the window, knowing it was going to come off soon.

The barber would make the same tired joke to every soldier. “How would you like it?” he’d ask, and as you sat there in the chair with the warm smell of hair around you and a line of soldiers waiting outside the window, you’d kid yourself that he was serious. You’d let yourself imagine that he spoke with genuine kindness, that he was on your side, a friend in this harsh world taking pity on you. He didn’t want you to look a fool. No, not at all—so what style do you want?

You’d ask for a short back and sides. You’d pretend it was an option and that all the previous shearing victims had requested a “number one all over.” So you’d venture a style and the barber would listen and nod as he brushed the last victim’s hair from the clipper. Then you’d hear a click, the buzzing would start, and he’d rest the hungry blades at your forehead. It was a cruel joke.

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You’d stay silent in the chair, angry and embarrassed. The barber would talk down to you. “Lancashire lad, eh? Yeah, we get a lot of them. Not many make it through the training, you know? Soft, you see?” You’d smile inside, wanting to ask him, “How long did you last?” Once he’d finished, he’d show you the back with a mirror while laughing and slapping his fat hands on your shoulders, asking if you liked it. You’d leave kicking through hair, knowing that under different circumstances you’d have smacked him in his fat mouth.

You’d smile and shrug like you didn’t care, but you did. And he knew he’d win that day against you no matter how fat he was or how useless a soldier he would have made. Off came your style, your precious hair—your individuality. The barber would take off the middle first and you’d get a glimpse into the future, of how you would look when you were an old soldier and losing your hair to nature, but here today you’d leave looking like a newborn as you lost it to the bastard barber.

“Next!” the barber would shout as another one left shuffling off to the barracks to look in the mirror at his new self. Different head shapes would be revealed: circles, squares, and oblongs. Old scars from fights would finally see the light of day. Untanned skin with a short strong burr was scrutinized in mirrors.

It was a shock but one we got over as the other lads came back to the barracks. The lads would rub each other’s heads until it didn’t matter anymore. Everybody was in the same uniform again.

One of my sergeant majors was an airborne soldier and what he said was gospel to us. We young soldiers saw the wings on his arm and asked him what parachuting was like. He said it was the second-best feeling in the world. When we asked him the first he’d say, “What are you—fucking nuns?”

Lads would chase skirt as if their lives depended on it, but there was a better feeling to be had. I’m not sure if the sergeant major was hiding it from us or whether he just didn’t agree. I first felt it flying in the back of a helicopter cruising at 150MPH over Iraq. It never felt that fast inside as we tried to avoid the surface-to-air missiles. It felt slowed down and as I looked around at the faces of soldiers lit blue in the night I felt it. Then I came back from the war and had sex until I wasn’t hungry for it anymore. That was easy; in Ripon the women were as dirty as the bars. But that still left me feeling empty after the stories had been told over a drink to other lads. I still couldn’t forget the feeling of Iraq in 2003 and it happened to me again in 2007.

We’d all moved into a central base in Basra and the insurgency took advantage of that. They concentrated all their bombing and hit us day and night. Every day and every bloody night. The orders were to put on our helmets and body armor and crawl under our beds and die in an orderly fashion. After doing that for a few nights I became curious so I stepped outside. We were living in tents—canvas was never going to stop a mortar punching through it or setting it alight and this was the way some soldiers died, so why not be outside? I left the tent one night and heard the bombing. The camp had blast walls built all around and through it. They were metal mesh squares and rectangles filled with sand and rubble. Some were tall and some small, so I climbed onto one and took a seat, hoping to see fireworks.

There was nobody around to shout at me and tell me to “Get off that wall!” I couldn’t see the Apaches in the sky but could hear them going after insurgents to stop them firing. I couldn’t see the mortars but could hear them whistle and land nearby. I took off my helmet and body armor and it felt great to be doing something so wrong.

The moon hung in a dark sky like a torch concentrating on us. Maybe it was the God that so many soldiers prayed to, but he never came down and stopped us from killing. And the stars looked so far away—so far that we could never touch them and could only dream about who or what was up there. There were so many of them that so much could be happening, so much that we mattered so little and then it began to hardly matter that I was sitting on a wall being bombed. I didn’t matter. They might have said nice things about me in the papers—things like hero, British Muslim soldier, etc., but none of that would have mattered if I was bits of meat in a box in the ground with my head (if they’d found it) pointing to Mecca to pacify my parents. Mecca didn’t matter.

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But it was still the best feeling in the world—sitting near death. It was the edge and I could jump off it and what I would see and feel and learn in the falling was so tempting that it pulled at me. Most people live far from that edge. This was the best feeling in the world—living. I only understood and felt it when I sat there on that wall and it was the same feeling as being in that helicopter—a big bit of hot metal that missiles liked to fly at and punch out of the sky—it always felt safe inside it. It was sitting near death that made me feel alive. Life at home was all comfort but here life was so real, we could be animals but we could also be so human in the middle of it all. We could help a little girl wash her face and give her some water because water was all she wanted.

It felt nice to be there at that moment. It wasn’t hot or cold. It felt just right—like a lazy warm buzz. I didn’t feel empty; it filled me to just under the brim and I wanted more. I couldn’t see the mortars or choppers but the noise made the best pictures in my head. I felt content like rum makes me feel when I’ve sipped my way through a bottle, taking it easy, feeling like a bowling ball rolled gently down the lane and nudging the pins over as if they’re friends and we all lie there laughing until we realize that we don’t even know why.

I stayed on that wall long enough for the mortar noise to become normal, and it was beautiful. Feeling like a little kid, I laid down and tried to track the invisible helicopter pointing into the sky. I could have fallen asleep forever with a smile on my face. I wanted to get everyone onto that wall to feel this way. I knew it could hurt you; I lost friends there but they really lived right up until the point at which they died. They lived in more ways than me and they felt more than I ever did—they were full from life. Some of them were so smart they could have been doctors, but they chose to soldier. This was how we lived our dreams, and that was more important. I feel sorry for anybody who hasn’t been to a war. After meeting soldiers and falling in love with the life, I knew I couldn’t let it go. If anybody ever asked me what parachuting was like I’d say it was the third-best feeling in the world.

Walking around London these days, I smoke and drink and stop and think about how much I want to feel like that again.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

September 11 happened as soon as I’d gotten to my first regiment.

It was just after lunch and our full bellies were satisfied as they worked away on fish and chips, pudding and tea. The Army fed you well when at camp; in the field it was all baked beans heated in silver bags. The storeroom was a cold former garage with no heaters.

We were cataloguing all the unit’s radios. Green radios sat on grey shelves under artificial light. Bored soldiers called out the long numbers stamped on metal plates screwed onto the radios as the corporal wrote them down in a book made specially for that purpose.

This was what soldiers did when they weren’t fighting, training, or on leave—they maintained the kit. The Army liked numbers. Every soldier had one, every antenna had a range, and every mortar had a diameter. Radios were one of the most important things a soldier could know how to use. A small sign read “No Comms, No Bombs,” warning soldiers that not knowing how to use these heavy green boxes could mean no cavalry coming over the hill when they needed it.

The staff sergeant said that while I was checking the numbers I might as well clean the radios, and while I’m cleaning them, I might as well clean the shelves and the floor and the ceiling and the leaves and branches that the wind pushed against the garage door—there was always work for a soldier to do. So I took the radio from the shelf, cleaned it, and then moved onto the next one.

“The fucking bastards,” Staff shouted. I looked up even though there was a wall of cinder blocks between us. I kept to my work, cleaning and taking down numbers, but one of the lads burst through the door and shouted for us all to come into the office right now.

Staff was angling a transistor radio at the window and asking if we’d heard the news. We all shrugged that we hadn’t and he told us it was important. He was an old soldier with more hair over his lip than on his head, a wiry body with no muscle on the bone but serious eyes, and a manner that meant you never questioned him. In between the static we made out that something had happened in New York before he got it clear.

Terrorists had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center. I didn’t know which side of the United States New York was on. Was it the East or the West? I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was and I didn’t know what to think. Staff was shaking his head calling the terrorists bastards and everybody stood quietly. I was trying to tell myself that this was important because Staff kept saying it was.

Staff listened and we stood. We knew not to move or he’d chew us up so we stood looking at him listening and then at each other waiting for permission to leave or do anything else but watch this old man muttering about those bastards. There was me, Biscuits, and Evans. Nobody knew what to do, so we strained to listen to the reporter who also didn’t know what was happening. “That’s it,” Staff said, “it’s fucking war, I guarantee it. The Yanks aren’t gonna take this shit.” He told us to get ready for war because it was coming. Staff got back to his work, sipped his tea, and we knew we could leave.

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We went into the store and talked about whether there would be a war or not. We couldn’t second-guess the Americans, but Staff had been in the first Gulf War and he knew better than us. He’d been in the Army his whole adult life; he may not know anything else but he knew this. We chatted about a real war, excited like naughty schoolboys.

In between the war talk I tried to write down some more radio numbers. The lads laughed and in between the joking Evans asked me whose side I was on as if asking me whom I would support in a cricket match—England or the terrorists? Evans always made the distinction between England and the UK. He always said he was from Wales and not the UK or Great Britain. He had a Welsh flag in his room—not an English one, never an English one. So who was it to be—England or the terrorists? I pointed at the British flag on my uniform and he smiled. “But you’re not British, are you?” he asked. I argued that I was, and he told me to look in the mirror.

To Evans, politically correct niceties didn’t matter. If you were brown you weren’t British. The lads didn’t know I was from Pakistan or that I’d lived in Burnley all my life, but here was war and it was time to pick a side. Biscuits told me to ignore Evans—what did color matter? I was wearing the right uniform as far as he, an Englishman, was concerned. None of it mattered to me. I’d picked a side when I signed on the dotted line and swore an oath to defend the realm.

I had joined the Army to go to war. I just didn’t know what it meant and I thought I’d feel something a bit more than I did, but it didn’t feel like anything big at the time. Maybe it would mean more later. We’d trained for it and we were ready and curious. We didn’t even know we were going to war, it was just what Staff had said. It turned out he was right.

The Army was obsessed with cleanliness. We’d crane our necks around the bottoms of toilets and plumbing pipes until we could see our tired faces in them. We’d show off our pipes to the other lads and say ours were better. Corporals wearing white gloves would test them with fingers. They’d carry dust in their pockets to sprinkle for when we’d cleaned too well. That was the game. You could stay up until 0400hrs cleaning, sleep for an hour, get up for reveille at 0500hrs, and by 0600hrs it was never clean enough for the corporal.

The guard shift would note when our lights went out. The corporal mentioned that we’d been up until 0400hrs cleaning, so we’d sleep with the lights on to get Brownie points. Room inspections were scary at first, then funny, then ridiculous. The time between finishing the cleaning process and getting ready for a room inspection was when we’d do the ablutions, washing ourselves before getting into uniform and standing tall for the two stripes to come around. Frosted glass shower doors never hid lads masturbating before the inspection; others would curse if they’d forgotten their flip flops and chase the spermy mess away with the shower head before they got in. They’d shout at the masturbators, who would shout back to not forget your flip flops.

A recruit would stand outside the room and bring the others to attention on seeing the corporal, while others made finishing touches to their lockers. T-shirts had to be folded so they sat perfectly in the locker and touched both sides of the box. A sheet of A4 paper would get them just right, but leaving the paper in there would get you push-ups, so you had to remember to remove it. The towels matched the T-shirts. On top of the towel would go a toothbrush, razor, and a bar of soap you never used. It would be perfectly clean, but the corporal would still find hair on them that was never there before. All our time and effort would mean nothing as the corporal tore the lockers apart, throwing everything into a big pile in the middle of the room. We all knew it would happen but still stayed up all night preparing.

Lads would obsess about their lockers and their uniforms in those last long minutes before the shouting came through the door. Boots polished, creases sharp, pockets flat, berets shaped, hair short, sideburns to be no lower than the middle of the ear, and faces shaved—not a hair missed. Corporal would lean right in and eyeball around your chin, aching to find a hair you’d missed, so before he came in, your friends would do that for you. Recruits were like monkeys preening each other before the corporal came. Bits of fluff on berets would end up in pockets, and loose threads would catch fire as recruits burned them away. The cotton would carry a small ball of fire and make a satisfying smell until it died when it reached the rest of the cloth. It would congeal into a small black shiny mess which you could pick at, giving you something to do while waiting.

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Trousers were pulled tight with small bungees or rubber bands just over the boot to make the creases look sharp. Creases were a bitch to get right. The corporals would say to use starch, but it never seemed to do the trick, so tired recruits at three in the morning would use tricks. A line of Super Glue down the inside of the crease ironed flat would leave a razor-edge crease, but on ironing a few times it would start eating through the cotton. Some used a Pritt stick, which would leave white blotches and make the corporal shake his head and give you push-ups until your chest and triceps burned.

The recruit who stood outside waiting would preen another recruit waiting outside his own eight-man room. Then we’d hear it: squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak. Corporals would pace down the newly buffed corridor, and their rubber soles sounded as if they were chasing mice. The floors were waxed and polished each night. The man assigned that duty waited for everybody to get into bed and stop walking across the floor, then he’d polish the wax that had rested on the floor for a while. The smell of beeswax would send others off to sleep.

If there was a room to be inspected before ours, we’d smile as the corporals tore it apart, knowing it would be coming to us soon. Corporals would say of training, “You’ll get screwed many times but it won’t make you pregnant, gents!” Some lads laughed at this because they thought it was funny, some laughed to show the corporal he was funny, and some laughed because they didn’t get it. Then the squeaks left the other room and got louder. The duty student would shout and everyone came to attention. The duty student would take out his notebook to jot where the recruits had gone wrong. He’d stand behind the corporal and make faces at the soldier being inspected, trying to get him in more trouble. The corporal would say generic things like “beret fluff,” “pockets not flat,” and “crap creases.”

The corporal had many ways to nail us. He’d ask to see Army ID cards, which were to be carried in the top left pocket. Someone would always forget it. “Start banging them out,” he’d say, and the recruit would hit the floor and start doing push-ups.

Then came the bed inspection. Getting everything tight was difficult and thus an easy target for the corporals. Lads would take the game too far and sleep on floors to keep their beds sharp, waking up with sore backs.

Recruits would close their eyes and mouth the word “shit” as they heard the crumple of the A4 paper they’d accidentally left in the T-shirt being pulled apart by the corporal behind him. Those lockers that had been perfected until three or four in the morning with belt buckles and badges smelling of Brasso would be ruined as the corporal taught us a very important lesson: Life wasn’t fair. Even if you’d done everything perfectly, the enemy may still get you.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Everything was bigger with the Yanks: their soldiers, their food, and their imaginations. I was in the cookhouse with them in Kuwait before we tore across the border. We Brits had small ration boxes and they had three times the food. We had come to fight if needed, but they had come to take over. After hearing the world’s opinion of the United States being a war-hungry nation, I decided to make up my own mind after having met them properly. Dinner seemed a great opportunity. I looked for a space to eat, and a big black Marine ushered me over.

He was a huge beefy bloke and the flag on his arm was half the size of a postcard, where mine was the size of two stamps. We Brits looked like poor malnourished cousins next to their well-fed waistlines. Where we were quiet, they were loud. Where we had shortages, they had surpluses. It felt like it would be OK after we had met them. They had it covered. I sat down.

He called me “Sir” just in case I was an officer. He was polite and smart in dress, but I couldn’t get over his size. The British Army didn’t make uniforms that big; they didn’t need to. His looked custom-fitted as the cotton stretched over his hours in the gym. His rifle lay on the floor between his legs. We Brits were jealous of the M16—all black and dangerous-looking. Our rifles had a green cheek rest made of green plastic composite and a green plastic handgrip—it looked like a toy. All our special forces used the M16 because they thought it better, but for the Yanks it was standard issue.

I liked sitting and eating with them. Their food was better than we made in our camps, and their words brimmed with imagination. They spoke the same language, but with more life and more vision. Iraq wasn’t the war to them, it was just on the list. They were pumped for the fight but saw it as a chapter, not the whole novel. They talked about blowing the top twenty meters off a hill and had allocated nine hundred shells for each target. I wondered who was going to redraw the maps after the Americans had finished bombing the place where civilization began. I thought of those on the other side of the border; maybe you thought about it less in your second, third, or fourth war.

A Marine kept court about how bad the Iraqis were and I made the mistake of saying they weren’t all as he had described.

“It’s all fucked-up, man, it all needs sorting,” he replied.

The rest of the soldiers around him nodded and agreed. I asked what he meant, and he pulled a dagger from his belt. If it was a hunting knife I may have understood its use. We only carried collapsible pliers to fix things that broke; in the handle was a small penknife that would suffice for most things a soldier needed to do—cut a bootlace, slice a ration pack open, dig into the dirt when bored—but this was a dagger. Daggers only did one thing, and that was kill people up close. He was a young man from the States who knew his job and wasn’t ashamed of it, and that I could respect. He casually ate his food with a fork and with the dagger in the other hand stabbed through a map of the world he saw in the wood table.

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“Well, firstly, we gotta sort out I-raq, this shit should have been done years ago, then we go over to I-ran and do them, then all these A-rab countries all the way to Europe where we sort out France, who the fuck do they think they are?” he said as he scraped and stabbed in front of him. And he got plenty of hurrahs for his world-domination plan.

They were upset at France for opposing the war on terror, and after taking over Paris they wanted a victory parade in London before flying home. These soldiers were the future of the United States military. Some may even make it into politics once they’d had finished their military terms, which was worrying and exciting. They were in the game and had no doubts. We Brits would talk about them in the privacy of the backs of our Land Rovers as we made brews. They were serious, we would say—about taking over—and these young men saw themselves as a necessary part of a grand plan and were ambivalent about dying for it. Dying for the cause, which was America—that was commitment.

The American military was getting bad press and these Marines were paranoid that the world was against them. They couldn’t understand why the world saw their foray into Iraq as negative. But the reasons for the war changed as quickly as the weather in Iraq. We went through blistering heat, numbing cold, windy sandstorms, and rain in the same week. And then he asked:

“What about you guys? You’re with us, right? We’re fighting terror, man!”

We saw their weapons and heard their talk and we were swayed. Yeah, they could do it, we thought, and yeah, we were with them, we’d say. We didn’t have enough bullets, so yeah, we were with them—they had plenty of bullets. And when they said they were going to take over, we believed them and so did they. Their dreams were bigger than ours, and we could see them in charge. That was the thing about the Yanks: They fought and thought big.

The Royal Engineers did anything the Army needed—from building bridges to crossing rivers, from building camps to clearing mines—so they needed to be tough soldiers. They needed to be able to take shit all day and all night and still carry on. They needed to never stop. There were mainly men in the ranks; most women in the Engineers were officers, though some bucked the trend and joined the lads at the bottom, but it wasn’t an easy place to be.

In training, the corporals—one in particular—put us to the test. We all called him a bastard in our beds as we slept the few hours he let us, but we didn’t dare call him anything to his face.

Bridges were important. They allowed the Army to move around the battlefield. They helped men and tanks get across rivers. The big metal bridges came in huge sections that eight men (and women) would have to lift into place and fit together. Some lads would get injured during the training. Building a bridge in the cold and the wet while being tired at night required concentration. In the new health-and-safety Army, we wore goggles and high-visibility vests during training, but some would still get injured.

As the wind buffeted soldiers around and the rain clouded goggles, some would put their fingers in the wrong places. As a large section of bridge was rattled into place, a wiry soldier from Newcastle tried to guide a knob into a hole and lost a finger for his efforts. A scream like a kicked cat pierced the cold air. The scream was fierce from someone who looked like he hadn’t ever eaten. Sweaty-backed soldiers stopped for a moment. Steam came off their backs and swear words out of their mouths. He was taken away quickly and the rest of us were told to carry on with the bridge. The corporal told us the enemy wouldn’t care how many fingers we lost. We got back on with it, lifting and knocking and hammering the bridge into place.

On some days the corporal would take us across country to toughen us up. The path to the training area was a rough road cut through the trees. We’d be ordered to get down onto our belt buckles, which meant lying on our bellies. The squad had around thirty men all shuffling around finding a space for themselves on the road, a dirty dusty road with small and big stones that dug into forearms and legs as we were told to leopard-crawl. The leopard crawl was a basic infantry move. It kept the soldier low to the ground and out of the enemy’s view or under his bullets. It would take an age to move the first few meters. The stones would dig and press into the forearms which would scratch and bleed, then they’d make a journey under your stomach which nearly tickled and then hurt again on the thighs pressing through cotton trousers.

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We’d reach forward with our forearms, bring our legs up, and make our way. Sometimes a friend would be crawling next to you and you’d catch a smile, a few words of encouragement, or giggle quietly at how much it hurt.

Soldiering wasn’t easy, but there was something about the struggle that appealed to me. It felt religious and made me think about religion in the military and how the chaplain would give talks about God, of how suffering seemed almost something to be celebrated. Here we suffered for our goals—to get to the training area, to please our corporals, and to become Royal Engineers.

The cap badge read, “HONI SOIT Q MAL Y PENSE,” a French phrase which meant “SHAME ON HIM WHO THINKS THIS EVIL.” Crawling across stones that dug into us, we’d think the corporal was evil for making us do this when we could have walked on our feet. He’d tell us this was for our own good. One of the lads disagreed a little too loudly, and the corporal told him to stand. When he stood, the corporal floored him with a single punch. The soldier then crawled and never said another word. With angry eyes, he just grunted through his busted lip. Others sniggered but most kept quiet and crawled. An officer passing by saw this, and the corporal was hauled into his superiors for a grilling. He defended himself saying we weren’t here for a holiday—he was making soldiers. He got disciplined heavily for it and was told that wasn’t how the Army made soldiers anymore.

It took a few months for us to finish the training where we learned how to lay mines, how to clear them, how to build bridges, and how to blow them up. Explosives training was fun and made us feel special. We knew how to blow things up from doors to mines to bridges, and it was always satisfying to see something explode. By the time we had become Royal Engineers we’d run for miles with logs and stretchers, filled our plates with punishment, eaten it all up, and come up from it fighting.

We eventually received our stable belts, which were red and blue with a silver buckle. We learned the song “Hurrah for the CRE,” which came from the Engineers’ time in the Boer Wars. Young soldiers would sing “Hurrah to the Corps of Royal Engineers” when they were drunk, stamping fists on tables and hugging each other as if they’d just returned from fighting in Africa.

They wanted to be the soldiers from the past and were seduced by those old stories. I thought about that corporal once we’d finished and looked around at these tough young men who’d built heavy bridges under the hardest conditions and agreed he had made soldiers of us.

Tony Blair was interrupted at the Leveson Inquiry last week by a protestor calling him a war criminal. It seems the Iraq War won’t go away for Blair.

Leadership involves getting people to do what you want them to, even when they don’t want to do it. What you want them to do will be in your best interests and maybe theirs. Usually it’s a one-way street; the Army used to say shit rolls downhill and so did orders. The reasons for going to war can vary, but soldiers need to believe in what they’re doing. Their families do, too.

The reason given for the Afghanistan War was 9/11, but sticking around for over a decade has confused many. Men and women need a reason to put their lives on the line. Soldiers need to believe in the cause; if they don’t, things start falling apart. What happens when some soldiers resign like Ben Griffin? What happens when they believe something is so wrong they start broadcasting it like Bradley Manning? Some are given lifelong injunctions and some prison. But most soldiers do as they’re told—as long as they believe in their mission.

Saddam was terrible to his people, but so are many in that region. On getting back from the war, I argued with men in the streets of Burnley who accused me of killing Muslim brothers and being in the white man’s army. I reminded them that from 1980 to 1988 the Iranians and Iraqis killed each other; that Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and in that conflict the Pakistanis, Syrians, Moroccans, Qataris, and Saudis all fought Iraqis; and that Saddam gassed Kurds and hounded the Marsh Arabs. Muslims were perfectly capable of killing each other, and with plenty of loose reasoning—but when white people fought, suddenly Muslims were offended. The belief in a cohesive brotherhood of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims is a sad joke. Was deposing Saddam part of a greater plan to knock out dictators around the region? Regime change? Some great game where the globe is a chessboard? I’ll never know; I was only a soldier.

The fact that Iraq holds possibly the world’s biggest oil reserves hasn’t escaped notice and with the West running on the stuff, it wasn’t hard to believe the war was all about oil. But Blair must have believed some of what was in the intelligence about chemical weapons and we believed it too after being given anthrax injections and sleeping in our gas masks on our march up to the Iraq border. Weapons of Mass Destruction sounded sexy too, and “WMD” was easy to say. We don’t hear much of the WMD anymore, but it was a good tool to convince people. But what happened when soldiers no longer believed in it? We sat in Iraq feeling someone had lied to us. Was it a lie?

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Lies have been used to take men to fight forever and for them to work the lies have to be big—so big that people feel they can’t be untrue. WMD felt like that; it felt like a Big Lie. Big biological and chemical weapons developed in a country that had been crippled by sanctions for years, big dirty bombs that could reach us in forty-five minutes? Wow, it sounded awesome. But the more they said it, the more it chipped away at your disbelief. WMD couldn’t be another Big Lie, could it? If it was, there must have been another reason behind the lie. What that reason is, I’ll never know. I was just a soldier.

When I joined the British Army we were told we’re a force for good. For a Pakistani immigrant overwhelmed by Western freedoms, I believed it. I still believe in the boys and girls who wear that uniform, but I think Iraq tainted it. The Iraq War ate away at our reputation. We can all write nice things about it in the history books, but the truth was it became a bloody mess.

Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade says of soldiers:

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die….

That little word “why” is an important one. There has to be a why—even for lowly soldiers.

The Iraq War was one of the most controversial the world has ever seen due to the initial justifications and the subsequent lack of belief. I can’t bring myself to believe Tony Blair was only a madman hell-bent on going to war with the Iraqis. If he sent thousands of soldiers to war for no solid reason, he belongs in an institution—either medical or one with bars. His reasoning was problematic. I was a young willing soldier and have no regrets. The Iraq War changed me for the better in many ways, but did we have to go? I’m still not sure.

Sunil* was a well-fed Indian shipping millionaire. I’d heard about him through people who worked for him. I was helping the British Army build a prison in Iraq and would wonder about Sunil. He was in charge, the workers would say, although he was hardly ever there. I knew how much he was getting paid. It was hard not to be impressed by Sunil.

The most impressive thing was what he did when things went wrong. He didn’t call managers and chew them out on the phone. He didn’t send long emails from safer countries. He got on the plane. And then Sunil would be there on the ground with everyone else, dodging bombs. I grew to respect that about him. A millionaire in the danger zone. The first time I saw him he was already important to us in the military. Whereas I drove a beat-up civilian 4x4, Sunil was given a sporty, shiny black Range Rover. Wearing Ray-Bans, he hopped out of his air-conditioned chariot and shook my wrist. I noticed the heavy Rolex. Rich Indians liked to show their wealth, and poor Pakistanis noticed.

I was the man who was making things happen for him in Basra, and he wanted to know more about me. We walked around the prison and as the mortar siren wailed, he lit a cigarette and asked me how it was going. I told him the truth—it was going as well as anything could go in a lawless place where everyone was trying to screw money out of the military budget. He laughed.

I told him I’d do my best because that’s what the Army had taught me to do and I wasn’t there for the money, I was there for the Army. He suggested going for a spin in the Range Rover. I learned more about him as we drove around the £70-million complex we were building for the Iraqi Army. The first stop was the bus station. There were battered buses with bare tires driven by Pakistanis who brewed tea in the shade and talked about going home.

They’d worked for Sunil in Dubai and he told me he’d paid them a bit more and asked them to join him in Iraq. The Pakistanis told me they knew it was dangerous, but what else could they do? They couldn’t read or write but they could drive, so they drove and sent money back to Pakistan—via one of Sunil’s bank accounts, of course. Sunil charged the military a hefty fee to drive troops around the airfields, but it was still cheaper than getting a Western soldier to do it. It cost over $1,000 a day to deploy a soldier in Iraq. No wonder the private military companies were everywhere.

As we drove to another one of Sunil’s operations he pointed out the Portaloos, the blue plastic boxes that warmed in the sun and made soldiers hold their breath as they took a crap. Sunil had brought the toilets in, too. Some days you didn’t need to hold your breath, as a person we called the “honey sucker” had cleaned the toilets. We always wondered if the guy who did that job earned a fortune. He didn’t; he did it for a few dollars. The Kuwaitis wanted a piece of the pie when it came to toilets and charged a fortune for the loos. Sunil and his team ended up buying them in Italy and driving them over, as it was cheaper. At least that’s what he told me—I was the Army’s man, not his. He was careful with some figures but honest with others. He knew I talked to the same people and saw the same budgets he did.

Then we got to the washing center. Sunil had set up lines of washing machines in a warehouse. On the second floor were all the beds of those who washed sweat and sand from Army uniforms—sometimes blood, but mainly sweat and sand. A wagon would go to each camp and pick up the washing bags full of uniforms. The laundry workers were all Pakistanis and Bangladeshis with Qurans who stuck prayers printed on shiny holographic stickers above their beds—all Muslims. All the managers were in an office downstairs. They were Sunil’s friends, all Hindus from India who’d thank him for bringing them alcohol. The divide was obvious.

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And then we drove back to the prison and sat in the Range Rover’s cool air watching the locally employed Iraqi builders work on a hot day. Sunil made money when the Army washed its clothes in his washing machines, put people in his prison, moved around the camp on his buses, and when they went to the toilet. He wanted more of the war. He asked me about other opportunities and I told him that kind of information was way above my pay grade. I wasn’t the organ grinder, but he knew I could get things done.

He told me he planned to expand his business to Afghanistan. He wasn’t happy that another company from Dubai had won the contract to supply the Army with food and that another was supplying the fuel and another was building the roads. Sunil wanted it all. He asked me to leave the military and offered me thousands of tax-free dollars to work for him. At the time, the Americans and the British were airlifting supplies into Pakistan and driving them across to Afghanistan. They would lose up to fifty percent of these supplies to bandits, and Sunil wanted me to smooth the route with money and diplomacy talking to the tribal leaders. He couldn’t do it because he was a Hindu. It wasn’t merely a straight deal with paying the tribal leaders off. He wanted to know what they wanted—if it was a school in their village, he’d build it and charge the military for it. And then they’d talk about Sunil in the village too, I guess.

That’s how you make money in the war. Sure, there were the military contractors and the oil giants they protected that we all know about, but there were also men such as Sunil—men who didn’t mind the danger and the dirt and who got rich and fat for it. The last I heard, Sunil was working in Afghanistan. When we pull out, he’ll be waiting for our next war.

* Anyone who served in Basra in 2006/07 will know Sunil’s real name.

War is supposed to be full of action. Men are supposed to dive over barbed wire and charge at the enemy while being shot. The enemy is supposed to be tough and unrelenting but eventually die or surrender. War is supposed to be noisy and bullets are supposed to fly at you constantly. Soldiers are supposed to come back heroes with bunting in the streets, free pints in the pub, and slaps on the back.

The truth is, the Iraq War was dangerous—very dangerous at times—but boring, too. Some men and women were caught in the thick of it, but a lot weren’t. The US Marines reached Baghdad in around three weeks in 2003 and after that Iraq was quiet for a while. We were a generation who’d seen too many war films, and this war didn’t live up to them. Neither did it live up to the expectations of those at home. So some recycled others’ stories and some merely lied.

We’d go down to Kuwait for a few days to take time out of the war. We sent dead comrades home from Kuwait International Airport and would stay for a few days to relax. We’d eat Subway sandwiches and Pizza Hut pizzas—all with halal meat. The American cook house was open twenty-four hours a day, and since we Brits had been living on rations we made ourselves sick on ice cream and spent hours on the toilet and then showering. Kuwait didn’t feel like the war, and we wished we could have spent our time there. The camp was so well-established it had speeding and parking tickets.

Once we had finished with the toilets and the showers we’d go over to the phone cabins to call home and tell them we were OK. Phones were separated only by bits of wood. Once as I was on the phone to my family, a girl next to me was talking about the war’s horrors. She described sustained bombing and soldiers dying every day. Most of the soldiers taking time out from the war turned to look at her, wondering where she had been based. We’d been in Basra and the fighting had died down. We thought she may have been up in Baghdad where we heard it was worse, but what she was describing didn’t seem real.

We noticed her ID badges. The staff on the camp had specific badges and it was easy to tell she was based here, in Kuwait, many miles from the Iraqi border. By that point the Iraqi army didn’t exist to bomb anybody and the insurgency was certainly not bombing this camp in Kuwait. This camp was comfortable. The heat may have been a bit too much at times, but things were safe. A six- or twelve-month tour here would mean a medal but no danger. Road traffic accidents maybe, diarrhea maybe, but bombs and bullets? No way. The Kuwaitis had supported the Americans since Desert Storm, so there was no danger from them, either.

Still, she was telling loved ones in America that the bombs were getting close. Camp Doha was far into Kuwait, but I guess her loved ones expected her to be in danger, so she made up the stories they expected to hear.

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I wondered if she believed what she was saying. If she did, she was crazy. Others looked on but continued with their phone calls. The phone cards didn’t last long and none of us wanted to waste them, but she kept crying and promising to look after herself. After she hung up the phone, I watched her pick up her notebook and pen and put them away. She didn’t look at anybody through her thick glasses, which must have been issued; there was no way anybody would have chosen those.

She then shouldered her day sack and walked out. I’d seen dead burnt Iraqis; I’d seen fellow soldiers carried into the backs of planes; I’d seen a dead camel on the side of a road with a bomb hidden in its stomach by the insurgents; but I’d never expected to see this. This war, I thought, this boring and mundane war where there was no close combat, this war where people would sit safely miles away and use joysticks to kill the enemy, this war that would never live up to the expectations of soldiers who were trained how to kill, was going to make liars out of some of us.

What did she want? Did she want to be bombed? It’s true that all soldiers are curious about war—all volunteer soldiers, that is. The forced don’t want to fight. The volunteers join for many reasons, and one is curiosity. Could I do it? Could I kill somebody? How will I perform in the heat of battle? These questions run through your mind. And this female soldier had not seen battle; she lied on the phone. She didn’t get the war she thought she would get. For that she might have been grateful, but it wasn’t the war her parents were seeing on the news. So she made that war up for them.

It’s said that truth is the first casualty of war. In many cases it’s the only casualty.

“I want you to shoot me,” he said.

He must have been joking. It was a struggle to drive, never mind listen to rubbish like this, but he was serious. I was following an American Humvee in the middle of a Kuwaiti night in 2003. Under the cover of darkness we made our way closer to the Iraqi border. The sky wasn’t clear, as the Iraqis were burning long slit oil-filled trenches near the border. Open a window and you could taste the oil in the air. Hot burning oil trenches into which coalition forces would fall—it sounded like hell.

“Promise me you’ll do it,” he demanded.

I really didn’t need this. I had to concentrate on a small light underneath the Humvee. Just follow that and I’d be fine. The problem was as the tires of the Humvee tore up desert I couldn’t see the light, as it was misted with sand. The other problem was I needed glasses. I had some on, but the night-vision goggles weren’t designed for the nearsighted so my frames were squeezed between my face and the metal frame. As my glasses pressed into flesh it hurt and the vehicle would shake now and then due to mortars. Very inconsiderate of the Iraqis, God, or whoever was orchestrating this great game.

“I don’t want to end up on the Internet,” he continued.

He was asking me to shoot him if it looked like we’d get captured. A surreal conversation but one soldiers had often, they called it a “promise” or an “arrangement.” There are no fancy vials of poison hanging around our necks, and try unscrewing a dainty little bottle while the mob surrounds your vehicle, baying for blood. Whoops-a-daisy, spilt a bit. The gun is easier and will probably be in your hand anyway. This soldier wanted to spare you and himself being dragged barefoot across some cellar and thrown into a chair. A camera in the face and a knife on the neck.

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll shoot you now,” I joked. He laughed and we spoke about his family.

Getting killed is an occupational hazard for a soldier. Preparing to die starts back in barracks. Soldiers talk frankly about this between each other while protecting their families from it, but these days it’s harder to keep the death hidden. With Twitter and Facebook, the digital revolution brings death to British shores instantly.

Before you set off to war, you box up your life. You label the boxes “Family” and “Army” in case you die. The Family box will have personal things you want your family to have. Your civilian clothes and pictures. The Army box is full of issued kit which the Army will try and reuse if it is serviceable, but it’s the one your friends will open for you. They won’t open your Family box. The Army box will hide all your secrets. Your friends will, without any judgment, flick through the porn you were into and smile. They’ll say nice things about you at the funeral. They’ll tell your family you were a great soldier and never that you had boxes full of fetish porn. They’ll destroy your darkest secrets or keep them for themselves.

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Another part of preparing to die is “Last Letters.” Soldiers write these to their families and say all the things they can no longer say in person. To some, being a soldier brings religion; for others it strips it away. But soldiers have very clear views on life and death. So letters are usually filled with words telling loved ones never to feel sorry, that these paths were chosen. That this soldier died doing what he or she loved, which was to be a soldier.

Aside from the boxes and the letters there was this rather uncomfortable conversation that many have. Soldiers talk through the actions they’ll take if the mob has become too big and is crawling over dead bodies to kill you and you only have a few bullets left.

Pre-war training is very realistic. I was driving around an English village made up to look like Iraq. Iraqi actors walked around the set, Iraqi graffiti told us to go home, and we wore body armor. The Directing Staff, or “DS” as they’re known, would wear high-visibility vests so we’d know not to shoot at them.

At one point, I was driving and suddenly a civilian van pulled in front of us. The DS turned up. He told me I’d crashed into this vehicle. The actors came out and started yelling about their car. I wanted to get out, but the DS told me I was unconscious. My co-driver got out to placate the Iraqis. While he did that, others opened my door. I reached for my rifle. The DS told me not to touch it. I was unconscious. Things got very serious very quickly. I was taken out of the vehicle as other soldiers were kept busy by loud Arabic shouts punctuated with “mister” and “dollar.” I wanted to kick and punch my way out, but the DS said to keep quiet. I was bundled in the van out of view.

The Iraqis then accepted British apologies, got back in their vehicle, and drove off as fast as they could. The soldiers got back to my Land Rover to discover my rifle still holstered but me missing. In the vehicle I was told I was off to see an Iraqi dentist who wanted to have a few words with me. I’m not sure if I would have survived had it been real. I’m not sure I would have liked my friend to have shot me. I’d rather he shot at them.

British soldiers still use the example of the two soldiers whose car was overrun in Northern Ireland. They practice these scenarios so we know what to do when it happens. So in this soldier’s scenario, the insurgents would overrun our vehicle, we’d shoot some of them, then with my final bullets I’d shoot him…and then what? Shoot myself? I didn’t fancy that one bit, so I said he could shoot me and then shoot himself since he had a greater motivation to not be on the Internet. This was only fair, I argued. He outranked me and said I’d have to shoot him first. We then talked about shooting each other and laughed about how difficult it would be. Luckily it never got to that. Of course it’s illegal and of course it’s murder, but when the stakes are high enough, this conversation seems rational.

The Afghanistan war started over ten years ago. We’ve seen maps and graphics on the news, but without Googling it, can you name the capital? What languages do they speak? Which countries border Afghanistan? Could you name three other nations that were part of the coalition with the US and the UK? There were over fifty involved at one time or another.

The Vietnam War lasted around twice as long but was over before I was born, so all I know about it comes from films. The First Gulf War started when I began high school at eleven, then the Bosnian War from ’92 for the rest of my school years until ’95. I only cared about the first Gulf War because white boys taunted us with pictures of RAF Tornados on the cover of The Sun. There were no Iraqis at my school, but it made us brown folk pick a side. So we taunted the white boys when John Peters and John Nichol were shot down and paraded by the Bastards of Baghdad. None of us really cared, but we pretended we did.

I wouldn’t have cared too much about the Bosnian War but refugees moved into my area and told me what had happened. They became friends and we played cricket together. We thought these white-faced Muslims looked funny but they prayed the same in mosque. In 1995, over eight thousand Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and the Muslim community screamed for those RAF Tornados to fly over Bosnia’s skies and bomb the Serbs.

All the while from before the Falklands up until just before I went to high school was the Soviet war in Afghanistan. I didn’t care for that aside from young Muslim men on my street volunteering and flying out for the fight. A young man called Nasir went. We never saw him again. They said he’d been killed trying to blow up a train full of Russian soldiers. These were the days of the American-backed Mujahideen. That was the only thing that made me think or care about the Soviet war. Nasir lived on my street. I care when some of them are my friends, but do you really care if they’re not?

Also just before the Falklands War in 1980 and for eight years the Iraqis and Iranians fought each other, killing half a million soldiers. That slipped me by, too. Half a million people dead. I didn’t know any of those two populations. None of it registered.

And then there was Congo, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Djibouti, and others. I had to Google those. The wars in Africa are still raging. But none of that really registers, does it? They’re always fighting in Africa, aren’t they? You only find out about these when you see dreadlocked white kids with banners outside foreign embassies shouting into megaphones. Maybe they have African friends.

But you’re told to care about the War on Terror thousands of miles away. When it was only a few miles away on 9/11 and 7/7, it was easier to care and be angry and scared.

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Many cared about the Iraq War of 2003 and marched in the streets against it. I cared about that war only because I was in it. I cared about the soldiers who dug and shared trenches with me in the desert as we moved through Kuwait up to the border. I cared when we were bombed by possible chemical weapons and we shook each other awake to put on our gas masks. Often we’d sleep in our chemical suits; it was easier and they made the nights warmer. I cared about the Iraqi soldiers who surrendered and threw their weapons on the ground, followed by raised hands and “Mister, Mister” and pleading turned to smiles as I held out my hand.

I feel for the soldier who is now sent to a war which is ending. Obama says it’s nearly over. “How do you expect me to care, then?” this young soldier must think.

Twitter, Facebook, computer games, films, books, magazines, and the Internet are full of war. The images, words, and voices bring it closer but it’s still not real. The Vietnam vets cry that you don’t understand because you weren’t there, man! I suppose it’s hard to care if you weren’t.

In a few years when our war is over and others are still raging, how much will people care about the veteran in the wheelchair? Or the one on the street with a cup for coins? Everybody has roles they’re supposed to fulfill during a war. Politicians are supposed to lead the military with honor, the military is supposed to win the war, and the civilians are supposed to stay glued to the news.

When you hear, “A soldier was killed in Afghanistan today,” do you reach for the dial? Do you keep listening? Or do you tune away? If you have friends or family out there, I guess you stay tuned. If you’ve served you stay tuned but if you don’t know anybody over there, I guess you just get on with your life. It’s the intimacy that makes you care. It’s easier to care if it’s happening next to you. If it’s happening to you, your family, your friends or your neighbors, then you care. If it’s not, you probably don’t.

If you were drawing up plans on how to run a private members’ club, a larger society, or even a country, military life provides some good ground rules.

SELECT YOUR MEMBERS CAREFULLY AND TREAT THEM WELL

You wouldn’t want everyone in a perfect society, so not everyone can join. You’d want people who agreed with your principles. For this you need volunteers. You need people who want to be part of your society. Nobody is drafted; volunteers always prove better members. Anyone willing to live and die by the society’s code is valued. This code includes “selfless commitment.”

So long as you speak English, the Army does not discriminate; it simply picks the best people for its society. The British Army allows foreigners from Fiji, Nepal, South Africa, and the Commonwealth to join its ranks.

Ex-soldiers are treated well. Most former soldiers still visit their former camps and are encouraged to take part in events. The military pays pensions to its soldiers from the day they leave if they have served a full twenty-two-year term. So a soldier joining at eighteen can leave at the age of forty with a full pension.

GET RID OF THOSE WHO DON’T FIT

Certain medical problems will prevent your entry. Some (but not all) criminal behavior will also exclude you. Like any good society, the military understands that people make mistakes, so they offer some people a fresh start.

There are cases when the Army will get rid of people from its society. There are many reasons including using drugs which is obviously not conducive to a career where firearms are routinely used. If the military can punish or rehabilitate for minor crimes it will do so but there are some things it cannot tolerate. Working against the society in any subversive manner will see you kicked out. Taking Top Secret files home and guns off the battlefield are also big no-nos. Engaging in any behavior that erodes the values of the military will also see you out in the cold and in prison if need be.

The military used to have a system where it gave you an honorable or dishonorable discharge. If potential employers would ask why it was not honorable, you could make something up. The military changed that a few years ago; they now state the exact reason you were expelled. If it was drugs, it will say that on your record. This will prevent you from getting back in the military or any other similar society.

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UPHOLD THE SAME STANDARDS FOR EVERYONE

Once the person has become a member of its society the standards must be upheld. Soldiers are routinely tested on physical capability and shooting standards. They are educated throughout their career and encouraged to go on promotion courses so they can become better and more experienced members of the society. They will then pass these lessons onto newcomers. If members do well they are rewarded. If they become troublesome they are punished.

All in all they are treated fairly and crucially to the same standards and laws. No single religion or set of beliefs is either preferred or discriminated against. If the wearing of religious symbols or clothing does not restrict the society from progressing or a soldier from doing their work, it is tolerated. The understanding has to come from both parties. The soldier must then also become flexible for the society. They must show the selfless commitment to the team over their own personal beliefs. During the time I was a practicing Muslim in the service I swapped my Christmas Leave for Ramadan. I would then stand guard on the gate over the Christmas holidays which meant little to me but everything for other soldiers.

The military does not tolerate bullying but thankfully lives in the real world where there is no faux shock to nicknames based on skin color. The people who got the most ribbing were the ginger folk; a common insult was “fox piss.” It was definitely harder being ginger than being brown. But if it starts being seen as bullying by anyone it stops straightaway. It doesn’t matter if someone is a poor soldier from the North of England or a posh officer from the South. The same rules apply for anybody.

Everything from nations to private clubs should follow these rules. It works for the military.

Daniel Craig as James Bond

Some soldiers are meant to join the elite forces, become spies, and swing through windows shouting and shooting. Some aren’t. That we’re all equal is one of the greatest lies ever told. Kids are told they can become anything they want to, and then they learn the hard way that they most definitely cannot.

Daniel James wanted to be a spy. He’d been the right-hand man to the head of the British Army in Afghanistan as a translator. But he wanted more. He invited the general out for salsa dancing. The general said no. He demanded a promotion. The Army said no. He used black magic to protect soldiers. They called him crazy.

Daniel James, whose real name is Esmail Mohammed Beigi Gamasai, decided to teach the Army a lesson. He contacted the Iranians while serving in Afghanistan to hand over sensitive information. He left messages telling them he was at their service and made up code words. The Iranians may have thought it a trap.

Doing specialist work in the military has its allure. I was attracted myself and learned what it takes. Specifically, I learned I don’t have what it takes.

I’d been in the regular military for a while and wanted more of a challenge, so I applied to do what’s called “arduous work.” A muscular black guy who looked like Mike Tyson’s bigger, angrier brother stood in my way. Let’s call him Jack, against whom I’d be “milling.” The military describes milling as “60 seconds of ‘controlled physical aggression’ against an opponent of similar height and weight.”

We were told this was definitely not boxing. There would be no ducking and weaving, and only blows to the head were allowed. Up until that point, Jack had been a friend of mine. We’d helped each other out. We’d laughed and joked together, but now it was make-or-break time. He had a very matter-of-fact look on his face. The instructors liked that. He looked like he would tear me apart. I thought it was funny. Jack was meant to be “of similar height and weight,” and he was—to a truck. The referee brought us into the middle of a makeshift ring as baying soldiers sat on benches all around. I looked Jack straight in the eye and saw nothing; he had glazed over and was ready to kill me. To start the one-minute bout and to start the audience roaring helpful tips such as “fucking kill him” or “rip his head off,” the training officer would ring a bell.

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I readied myself. I imagined knocking Jack clean out, the instructor’s favorite fighter laid out on a gymnasium mat, eyes closed. Worried soldiers would fan his face while desperately trying to find a pulse. Then they’d look back at me shaking their heads. The stretcher would come in. Forevermore they’d call me “Killer” in the regiment. People would avoid me at lunchtimes. They’d give me a wide berth in the corridors. And so I readied myself. Jack was going to get knocked out.

I never got to hear the whole of that bell. I think it was on the “n” of “ding” that Jack’s gloved fist hit my nose with force. Jack then delivered a few more expert blows, one of which managed to punch my head guard around so I was now trying to see through the earpiece.

It was at this moment one of the instructors took pity on me and halted the fight. I thought it was over, but no: “A display of moral courage, aggression, guts and determination is required.” So I was to be sent back in after my head guard had been corrected. Unluckily for me, a South African instructor who hated me more than he hated the Taliban was in my corner. He barked, “What the fuck are you doing in there?” I replied, “Fighting, staff!” as if I was still very much up for it. That was the “guts and determination” part. “You call that fighting?!” he barked again.

At that moment in time, seconds before he threw me back in with Jack, I couldn’t give a crap what anybody would call it. You’d probably call it survival, but I don’t think that would have gone down well with the South African. He fixed my head guard and somewhere in his heart of stone something cracked. He looked me straight in the eyes softly; at first I thought it was compassion, but he was only looking for early signs of concussion. He didn’t find any. His eyes hardened, as did his grip around my head. He leaned in and shouted, “Now kill him!” and pushed me back in the ring. Kill him? I knew the South African had a sense of humor. I survived the last thirty seconds, after which the referee raised Jack’s hand. Jack was elite forces material. I was on my way back to my unit. After that day, I never heard from Jack again.

People such as Jack—and there are Jills, too—find themselves doing interesting and arduous work.

Daniel James is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence, after which I’m sure his services as a spy/salsa teacher will be much sought-after. Earlier this month he was asked to pay back his legal fees, which are around a quarter of a million pounds (over $400,000). Luckily, Daniel was caught before he could do any damage in Afghanistan.

He was caught by real spies—people like Jack.

Sex and soldiers are the forces of life and death crashing into one another. It gets animalistic. It gets filmed.

Luckily for me, the Ministry of Defence had decided to treat the British Army to single-man rooms by the time I’d enlisted. It was still animalistic, but at least now there were walls—walls thumped by headboards through which you could hear screaming and laughing. If you’re a parent and live near an Army base, ask yourself: Is she really hanging out with her friends all night, or is she becoming the star of a mobile-phone movie on camp?

I’d been a soldier for five years. I’d done bomb-disposal training. I’d been to Cyprus to help clear the Akamas peninsula of unexploded ordnance. I’d just come back from the war in Iraq. I’d done all this but was still a little uncomfortable with sex on an Army camp.

Here’s one reason why: My mate Chris had just come back from a night out. Light cracked out of his open door. The Foo Fighters screamed from his stereo that it was at “times like these you learn to live again” when I popped in for a chat. Chris was having sex with a local girl who was wearing his gas mask. The British Army issues all soldiers a respirator to be used in times of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare. This was not one of those times. The respirator—nicknamed “Ressie”—will allow the soldier to breathe and carry on fighting until the dirty bomb in his or her environment eats through his NBC suit. If they can find cover, they can change into another suit; if not, they’ll break-dance on the floor until they die. Here was Chris demonstrating the improvisation skills for which the British Army was famous. He saw me and laughed. I’m not sure if she saw me; the respirator’s eyepieces were a little clouded. I signaled I’d pop back later.

Here’s another reason I was uncomfortable with sex: I was a virgin. The lads knew this and helped me get over this hurdle. There were some lovely moments where hardened soldiers sat around dinner tables asking me about my first date and my first kiss. They’d hug me and smile. They’d help me decide what to wear. They’d drive me to dates.

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Then I finally lost my virginity. She was a young twenty-something from Essex who “never, ever wanted to go out with a squaddie.” A “squaddie” is a young soldier who’s just joined the military. She had her reasons. Squaddies get drunk, sleep around, go off to war, and die—but it was mainly the sleeping-around thing. She knew some local girls had become fixtures at the camp. The lads would pick up girls in squaddie bars. This was their hunting ground, but there wasn’t much of a chase. The girls knew going to the squaddie bar meant they’d end up on camp. They’d then spend the night trying to enjoy sex in a four-man room where the other three soldiers would either be so drunk they wouldn’t know what was happening or so drunk they thought they could join in.

It was the best two minutes of my life; she told me it was thirty seconds and that she was being generous. Word spread until it became part of the regiment’s history. Sounds magical, doesn’t it? But life is rarely a fairy tale.

Things turned ugly when friends told me soldiers had talked about trying to sleep with my girlfriend. This was one of the rules—you could sleep with anyone except a soldier’s girlfriend. You could definitely sleep with the colonel’s daughter, but never another soldier’s girlfriend. Most soldiers kept to this code of honor, but others enjoyed smashing taboos. The reason was a love of danger interwoven with a culture of drinking and sleeping around. After my first, I never had another girlfriend in the Army. I trusted these men with my life but not with my lover.

I’d see young soldiers “on duty” crashed-out drunk in bed with local girls, missed calls from worried girlfriends displayed on their phones. The tables turned when we went on tour. Then they’d be the ones worrying about their partners, about how many times their girlfriends were going out on the town. It was one of the worst things that could play on your mind when you’re thousands of miles away. Then someone would make a joke about the milkman or “Leroy,” which was a generic name they’d use to taunt them. Soldiers would try and get through to their partners on their weekly satellite phone call. When she didn’t pick up immediately, other soldiers would laugh and tell them she was busy with Leroy. And sometimes they were right.

This would drive some mad. Some would not get enough satisfaction from the dog-eared porn that got passed around. Some would chat up the female soldiers. There was a beautiful medic working with us in Iraq. Everybody chatted to her in the dinner queue. The only chance I got to talk to her was when I had D&V (diarrhea and vomiting), so it was curtains for me, but some soldiers got lucky. There are other girls, too: journalists, government staff, and female officers. But for some it was torture until they came home on R&R. Then they’d have a release. Some came home and killed their partners after seeing Facebook profiles saying they were sleeping around. Some would die and then their partners would carry on living their lives and break the golden rule themselves.

“They’re racist and they’ll kick your head in,” a white man named Paul warned me outside a convenience store in Burnley. He’d heard I was starting basic training the next day. I’d been buying a few last things: padlocks, black marker pens, and sweets for the train down to Winchester. After growing up in the 1980s and 90s, not many immigrants in Burnley would have thought it a good idea to join the British Army. The Falklands War of ’82 and the Gulf War of ’91 brought national pride but also an “us against them” feeling to the streets.

After the school bell the white lads would chase us immigrants while shouting, “fucking Pakis!” Sometimes they’d catch us. In the back streets of Towneley we’d scrap like dogs. Teeth and fists clenched. There’s no point going for the stomach; the face would win it for you. Punching the nose would water the eyes, a smacked ear would disorient, and then they were yours. You’d rain fists into their head. Hit the face with a left, right, left, and then come around with a strong right into the ear. There was no coming back from that. It would end with the loser on the floor holding their head crying into forearms. A few goodbye kicks from school shoes would bruise the ribs. After it was safe the loser would shuffle home wiping his face on a white school shirt. By the time he got home the blood, sweat, and fear had dried. Sometimes that loser was me. But on some days I’d blacken their eyes, bloody their noses, and send them home with their heads ringing for their mums to clean their shirts.

They’d tell me it was their country and I would argue later in my years that it was mine, too. My dad taught me how to fight. He ran a corner shop. The white lads would smash our windows, swear at us, and put fireworks through our letterbox. Lesser men would have shut up shop and gone home. My dad stayed and fought. He fought for his family to have a life he never had. Dad wasn’t going to go away, and the swearing gradually stopped. So when Paul told me the Army was full of racists who’d kick my head in, I laughed. They can’t be as bad as the lads at Towneley, I told him—some of the ones I’d fought were now friends. I wondered how much of it was racism and how much of it was just growing up.

I got to Winchester to start my training and it was here, 250 miles away from home, that the Army showed their true colors. It was here they were supposed to kick in my head. I didn’t find any racism. I found a group of soldiers who went to great pains to welcome me. I found an Army that embarrassed me with its acceptance. I found a system that judged me solely on soldiering ability. Never did they act as if my skin color mattered to them. I found people who wanted to know so much about me, about Pakistan, and about Islam with a curiosity no one had answered before due to Asians evading a career in camouflage.

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Of course there were incidents involving race. I saw racist graffiti during my service in the toilets at Camp Doha in Kuwait, where some angry Marine had scribbled, “Get the Latinos and Blacks out of the USMC.” In the toilets on the British camps there was graffiti, too. It made me smile that ours was along the lines of, “My regiment’s better than your regiment.” In our graffiti, paratroopers would fight the Marines and engineers would fight the artillery, but they’d never fight each other. On the camp in Iraq we had British soldiers who were Welsh, English, Irish, Scottish, Chinese, Fijian, Trinidadian, South African, Pakistani, and Nepalese. They all wore the same uniform, the same flag on their arms. They were all held to the same standards. My sergeant major asked only two things of his men. You had to be fit and you had to know your job. If you weren’t fit, you couldn’t soldier. If you didn’t know your job, you couldn’t soldier. But if you ticked those two boxes, you could be a soldier in his Army.

During a field exercise once, a Muslim soldier attached to my unit insisted on praying five times a day wherever he was. I knew he could catch up on his prayers later, but he insisted on stopping the exercise. After a few times I’d had enough. I told him he was being unreasonable and that if we were in Iraq he couldn’t stop the war to pray. Instead of taking my point, he accused me of being a racist. This wasn’t racism, it was common sense. This soldier didn’t lack acceptance; he lacked intelligence.

During my time on operations, Asians at home would question my parents why their kid was in the “white man’s Army,” which made me think the British Army had accepted ethnic minorities but the minorities hadn’t accepted the Army. Going home on leave to Burnley, Muslims would argue with me in the street, telling me I was killing fellow Muslim brothers. BNP supporters would tell me they couldn’t understand what a brown face was doing in a British uniform. But there are many brown faces in the Army, more so than in the Air Force or Navy by comparison, and these brown faces are fighting and dying alongside the white ones.

The British Army says it wants more ethnic minorities to join. It saddens me to read of soldiers who’ve had a bad experience. I never felt like a second-class citizen. I felt the Army was egalitarian. I’m sure it will continue to have problems as will any organization, but there are no more “D factor” soldiers and racism certainly isn’t endemic. Back at my high school in the 90s you could tell there was a race problem by where you sat in the canteen. I avoided tables of white kids and sat with the Asian kids. In the Army I could sit at any table.