It is January 1978. Groups of nervous, dutiful white conscripts begin their National Service with the Rhodesian security forces. Ian Smith's minority white government is in its dying days and negotiations towards majority rule are already under way. For these 18-year-old rookies, there is nothing to do but go on fighting, hold the line while the transition happens around them.

Cattle are moving . . . Mbiti says quietly, 'Don't shoot, it is cows only. There are more than cows. There are two men dressed in the classic dark denim of the communist terrorist bowing away into the shadowy bush, melting away. I am looking through the legs of cattle, I do not want to shoot the cows. I see then men. I know that I have seen them, but I do nothing, say nothing. I am spooked. No one else appears to have seen them; I am prepared to doubt my own eyes; I can take the sighting with me to my grave. The consequence of my silence isn't long coming . . .'

Dead Leaves is a richly textured memoir in which an ordinary young soldier grapples with the unique dilemmas presented by an extraordinary period in history: the inner specters of inner violence and death; the pressurized arrival of manhood; and the place of conscience, friendship and beauty in the pervasive atmosphere of futile warfare