Oh really?, said my young friend, who knows only what he can glean from the Dark Days that are now upon us. In the distance, the low rumble of thunder. Or is it the sound of the battle inching forward …?

Oh yes, we were the Good Guys. Swooping down over a nation once called Yugoslavia, where atrocities were said to be watering the trees with the blood of children. We fought in the name of refugees seeking to reclaim what their Kosovar mythology depicted as their ancient homeland. It was only that anachronistic artifact of racist oppression – a wall – that kept them on what had been their side since the Great War destroyed the order of things.

Kosovo had seen many battles, many acts of heroism, as the Bad Guys – otherwise known as the Serbs – defended their sacred history from their castle keeps. They fought using modern weapons, which their noble ancestors would have looked on with awe: they went into battle invoking the memory of the royal dynasties that fought the same enemies – the slaves of the Ottomans, forcibly converted to Islam – on the same battlefields. They fought off the invaders year after year, but each year it became more difficult. The Kosovars were a fecund race and they swarmed at the border in bigger numbers, while the Serbs dwindled – and then came the Americans.