"I had just completed my journalism course and was firmly convinced that the media were waiting for me with bated breath. I am ready, I thought. I was fairly sure I would win the Pulitzer prize that same year; I was brimming with self confidence and eagerness. At last I could swap book-learning for reality and actually feel the pulse of life. A war was going on in Afghanistan; what then could be better than to start my career as a journalist there? At long last I could sally forth and do what countless men had done before me: I would go to war." 'To the Front and Back' are tales from ten...