The Junior Officers’
Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars (2009) is a personal account of
training in, and fighting for, the British army. It is set from 2001 to 2007
and focuses on the Royal Miltary Academy at Sandhurst, and the war fields of
Iraq and (mostly) Afghanistan.
Hennessey writes of
boredom and inactivity, as well as the realities of field operations. ‘There
were bursts of sustained intense activity, Sandhurst and Brecon had been
unusually extended examples of these, although even those courses had been
punctuated with moments of drifting calm, but these came at odd and inopportune
moments, and the rest was, well, the rest was extraordinary.’
After 27 months of
training and preparation and waiting, he was deployed to Iraq. Amid the tragic reality
are his witty insights, such as when a helicopter crashes in Iraq, ‘so, as long
as we don’t walk anywhere (landmines), drive anywhere (roadside bombs), stand
still anywhere (snipers and mortars) and now it seems fly anywhere – it’s perfectly safe.’
Did the title state a
reading club? Yes. Established by Hennessey and a few soldier mates, the club and
its reading material are mentioned throughout the text – On War by Carl Von
Clausewitz (1832), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Heller’s
Catch 22 (1961), Wilfred Thesinger’s The Marsh Arabs (1964) of southern Iraq, Michael
Herr’s Despatches (1991) about the Vietnam War, 18 Platoon by Sidney Jary
(1998), Michael Rose’s Fighting for Peace: Lessons from Bosnia 1984 (1999), The
Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2005) about class, sex, and money in
London during Margaret Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister, and Antony Beevor’s
Stalingrad (2007). But this novel is not a review of books, nor their impact on
the soldiers.
Films are mentioned too
– A Bridge Too Far, Band of Brothers, Gladiator, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan,
Full Metal Jacket, We Were Soldiers, Tumbledown, Heat, Apocalypse Now, Jarhead,
Black Hawk Down, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp …
But it is less about
books and films as it is about real war – 33% of his 36-soldier company were
lost in Afghanistan, three (50%) of them officers. However, the book is not about
the macho war soldiers of movies, but of everyday men who are someone’s son,
brother, or lover. It is about the bonds of brotherhood in tight-knit platoons
and it is about the Oxford boys of Britain gritting their teeth to develop ‘leadership,
character, and intellect.’ It is about the transition to action and its
implementation. The final chapters are on decompression, and relieving the pressures
of life back home where its safe but stressful.
With black and white
photographs, it is a mixture between memoir and documentary, but it is not a
history of the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does move quickly from
Iraq to Afghanistan and, if you blink you’d miss it. There are also some loose
threads in relation to whatever happened to soldier X or soldier Y, but overall
this is a great book – honest, realistic, under-stated rather than over-stated,
and down-to-earth rather than exaggerated.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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