EXTRACT | ‘Love in a Lost Land’ by James MacManus

About the book

Foreign Correspondent Richard Brady arrives in Africa to report on a nationalist insurgency that has gripped a once-beautiful country. An innocent newcomer, he struggles to stay neutral in a bitter war waged with terror and atrocity by both sides.

He is soon drawn to Patience, a young township teacher with a fast tongue and a sharp wit. Their affair is tested when Brady discovers that his lover is recruiting her students to join the guerrillas and helping smuggle them across the border.

Lost in love, torn between the nationalist cause and an embattled white regime and with the war closing in on all sides, Brady faces the ultimate challenge. Can he keep the woman he loves in a world at war?

Love in a Lost Land is inspired by the last colonial war in Africa, from James MacManus, a former Guardian Africa correspondent.

EXTRACT 

Chapter Seven

The helicopter took us low over scrub and bush, the pilot enjoying the terror on the faces of his three civilian passengers huddled on the back seats. My vague notions of getting close to the war zone seemed less sensible now. The facility trip had been easy to arrange. Bram had made a few calls and I and a two-man Italian TV crew had been approved to fly to the north-east ‘operational area’ – a polite euphemism for a war zone – to visit a forward airfield. I saw this as the core of my next article: a look into the eyes of young soldiers who were doing the fighting. The area had been the scene of a number of road mines and farm attacks. We were told that several guerrilla groups had infiltrated the region. Our pilot was not taking chances. He swirled around rocky outcrops, skimmed over hills and occasionally flung the aircraft almost on its side as he wheeled away from what he told us was a possible enemy sighting. The Italians shouted to me over the noise of the engine, saying this was pure bravado, as if they knew.

We landed on a dusty airstrip that was lined on all sides with earth revetments. Two more Alouettes and several fixed-wing aircraft were parked at the end of the dirt runway. Camouflaged gun emplacements had been dug in along the perimeter.

The camp consisted of two long tin-roofed shacks protected by sandbags. It was positioned on rising ground that gave a good view of the surrounding bush. There was no one to be seen. The place looked like a relic of a long-forgotten war fought against mutinous tribes in some distant corner of the British Empire.

On reflection, that was not far from the truth. We listened diligently to the detailed briefing that followed, but it was of little use to the TV crew or me. The number of kills in recent clashes, the name of a local guerrilla commander, the atrocities committed against innocent villagers, caches of captured weapons – this was the stuff of daily press conferences in town and offered us little reward for our flight.

The Italians wanted to go into action on a helicopter and film glittering arcs of shell cases ejecting from its 20-mm Browning machine gun as dark shadows flitted on the ground below seeking cover. This request was denied with a wry smile by the quietly spoken major who was to be our guide for the next two days. The Alouettes carried five, sometimes six, men into action and had no room for journalists, he said. There would be something to film the next day and a chance to interview the troops as they returned from operations.

I sat up drinking whisky with the major after the Italians had gone to bed. An Englishman in his thirties, he told me he had given up a career in the British Army after several tours of duty attached to NATO forces in Germany. He stopped there. It was a semi-colon rather than a full stop. He looked at me to see if he had gained my attention. He refilled our glasses. ‘Now you are going to ask me why I am fighting for an illegal regime in a losing war against a majority of the population who are destined for victory and independence in a few years’ time,’ he said. ‘The question had occurred to me,’ I said. He tore open a new pack of cigarettes and lit one. ‘A broken marriage to a perfectly decent woman. No prospect of quick promotion in the army. Above all, I was bored. Failure drives a man to do two things: blame everyone else or run away and hide from himself. That’s what I did. I ran away. The coward’s choice, I suppose.’ ‘But why here? There’s no hope, is there?’ He leant back in his chair, searching the ceiling with eyes clouded by whisky. ‘We could argue we are trying to fight them to a standstill and then get a deal, shared power and all that.’ ‘You’re going to have to kill a lot of people to do that.’ ‘We have already killed a lot of people.’ ‘You too?’ ‘I don’t kill people. I kill numbers. Five today, ten yesterday.’ He spoke softly, slightly slurring his words. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it?’ I said. I spoke harshly, spitting the words out. He watched me with what looked like a half-smile. I told myself to calm down and reached for the bottle. There wasn’t much left. ‘No, it hasn’t.’ ‘And will it?’ ‘No, it will not.’ ‘So what’s the point?’ He laughed then and tipped his chair back again, almost falling over. ‘Maybe there isn’t one. You ever read Camus?’ ‘A long time ago.’

‘It’s all there. Life is absurd. Roll a rock up a hill, lose control, watch it roll down and do it again.’ I told the major that I would take that thought to bed and got up. He pushed me back onto the chair. He wanted to explain himself, he said. He was a relatively young man, well trained as a soldier, seeking adventure and excitement. He was paid good money. What was wrong with that? ‘So, you’re a mercenary.’ ‘If you want to call me a gun for hire, so be it.’ ‘No belief in this war, no right or wrong?’

‘They try to persuade people this is an anti-communist crusade, but that’s nonsense.’ He pointed outside. ‘Out there the Russians and the Chinese are both helping, mostly arms, heavy weapons, even missiles we hear, but that doesn’t make the terrs Marxist. They claim to be righting a terrible historic wrong, but actually it’s the same old game.’ He raised his glass to me. ‘This is what they want, the hard stuff. It’s what we all want, isn’t it?’ ‘I don’t follow you.’ ‘Power. Everyone has been fighting for that since Adam bit the apple. Simple really.’

Love in a Lost Land is published by Whitefox Publishing. Extract provided by JDoubleD Publicity.