Customer Reviews
A worthy read - By: Tommy Atkins, 13 Aug 2007 
One to save for those long deployments or exercises. A good account of the first gulf war from a well respected squaddie.
Dull but worthy - By: M. Lyster, 15 Oct 2006 Given the dramatic nature of the subject, it is some sort of feat to produce a book which is so put-downable. The text seldom comes vividly to life & is occasionally repetitive. However,in the same way that the writing style tends to put off this casual civilian reader, it is also revealing of the mind of a senior military man. The obsession with rank & seniority shouldn't come as a surprise, I suppose, but shines out of almost every page. The author takes great pains to explain his own positionin the hierarchy & his level of decision-making authority, relative to the US command & the political authorities. However the explanation is incomplete: there are frequent references to his frustration with nameless figures & bean-countersin Whitehall who appear able to countermand decisions agreed between the UK's top military brass & the Minister of Defence. Who were these people? The book would benefit greatly from a few contributions by some of these other actorsin the drama.
The only partin which the book tells a straight story of military action is the chapter devoted to SAS operations inside Iraq. For one chapter, the book turns into "Bravo Two Zero", then turns back to an account of military bureaucracy. There is probably some historical valuein the account of the inner workings of high command, but it mostly fails to grip the reader. To some extent I think the writer feels that he is under a leader's obligation to give credit to his subordinates' achievements, & a lot of space is devoted to this, which holds up the flow of the story; & he never truly puts the boot in, although there must have been someone he would have liked to take a real dig at.
The book has some worthwhile insights. At the end, when explaining why the war ended at the point it did, he describes what would have happened if the US & UK armies had carried on to Baghdad to depose Saddam, & he ends up stating: "to have gone on to Baghdad would have achieved nothing except to create even wider problems". Tragically, the experience of the second Iraq war has proved him right on every point.
