An anonymous Indian soldier in Kashmir describes what it's like to the BBC...

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We have to go out, again. It is not easy going out night after night but I cannot really help feeling the debilitating effects of the cold.

Our group comprises two different sets of people.

One has the newcomers in it, the load carriers, who are being introduced to this kind of terrain and this way of operation.

They are young boys from 18 to 22 years old.

Then there are the old timers, men who have served their time here and are familiar with the surroundings and must be good since they have survived this long.

I am a newcomer, not to this kind of operation but to this kind of terrain.

I slowly become accustomed to the cold, devise methods to ward off sleep, and have also begun to decipher shadows in the night, separating the real from the imaginary.

It is quite tedious going out in the cold waiting, hoping for him to come out of nowhere... So that we can kill him.

Every experienced soldier has a young one with him as his buddy. I also have a young boy with me. He is just a few months older than 19, comes from a family of farmers somewhere in central India, and joined the army to provide them with a livelihood.

I teach him the tricks of the trade: what to carry, what not to carry, how to wear his shoes so that they do not cut him, how many layers of clothing to wear so that we can remain warm and still not hindered when we want to move fast, what position to wait in so that we do not tire very fast, how to aim and fire so that the enemy may not escape... And many other seemingly trivial details.

But when you are in a life and death situation, attention to detail can save lives - it could be the difference between this young man retuning home to see his family again or him returning home dead.

I had always thought that I would enjoy teaching - but that was when I was thinking about teaching English literature.

Here I am, teaching a young boy barely out of his teens how to kill - without fear, without pity, without remorse - just the way I was taught.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6660951.stm