Who are the “Afghans”? Cannon fodder, officers and soldiers, thrown from a stagnant, half-asleep world into the meat grinder of war. They fulfill some mysterious “international duty”, they go under bullets, try to survive, curse their work, but again and again they are uncontrollably eager to fight. They recklessly go to where the red-hot dust has frozen in red waves, where traces of tank tracks are intertwined like a serpentine ball, where metal is torn to shreds and burns, where bloody bandages, like blooming poppies, can cover a field and all human virtues and vices are laid out as if on shelves. ... There is no fiction in this book; the whole truth about the Afghan War - this bitter page of our history - is vividly and cruelly captured here. Every line of the story is hard-won, all the characters are real. Some of them were destined to die, and some to return...