If there should be another Afghan war, how many of them would be alive by the time it was over?He knew that even now, after all these years, the bleached bones of General Elphinstone's demoralized army still littered the defiles where they had been trapped during the retreat from Kabul, and slaughtered like sheep by the vengeful tribesmen. This time it might be Fred's bones that were left there; or Wally's skull that would go trundling before the blast when the wind howled through those haunted passes. Fred and Wally, the forgotten debris of another useless, pointless Afghan war…The first had been fought well before either of those two were born, and though the Afghans had not forgotten it, the British seldom mentioned it those who remembered it preferring to pretend they did not; which was hardly surprising, as it was an unedifying tale.In the early years of the century, when ‘John Company’ ruled half India, a mediocre youth named Shah Shuja had fallen heir to the throne of Afghanistan.
