We were walking along the ridge between the two British positions, a magnificent view of south central Afghanistan spread out around us, when a makeshift mortar round cracked into the rocky slope nearby. The young captain I was with pointed out the possible sites from where it had been launched. He spoke of 'banana layby', 'two trees house', the 'blue door'.
His knowledge of the terrain was impressive and, looking across the 500m of no-man's land to where the Taliban were, I suddenly understood the intense importance that every feature and every contour line of the First World War battlefields had taken on in that earlier conflict.
There are many who proclaim a new era of warfare but, amid all the technology and talk of revolution, it is worth remembering that many things remain unchanged. American soldiers in Iraq, for example, wear armour,  |
