Oedipus Lex

I was stand­ing in an army bar­racks in Lan­cashire, soak­ing with sweat, dressed in com­bats, boots and a regi­mental sweat­shirt; we’d just come back from a pla­toon run. I was about to get undressed and someone came run­ning into my room say­ing that a plane had crashed into some build­ing in New York.

Like the half-starved, exhausted rem­nants of Charles Edward’s army at Cul­loden, an Itin­er­ant team, lack­ing the dash­ing verve of their bats­men, gathered at a ground famil­iar only to a few vet­er­ans. Among their hast­ily assembled ranks there numbered the hung-over, the unprac­tised and the per­en­ni­ally untal­en­ted. Yet a dogged determ­in­a­tion pre­vailed: these men would stand …