I hadn't particularly wanted to read this book - a colleague had bought it and kept offering it to me along with his glowing recommendation. Eventually, just to be polite, I accepted it but had no intention of reading it, and planned simply to keep it for a few days and then hand it back saying that i simply wouldn't have the time to get around to it. However, as luck would have it, a couple of days later I left for work in a great hurry, forgetting that i had almost finished the book I was reading, and that there would certainly not be enough of it left to tide me over both commuting journeys that day. Monsoon-like rain was falling when I came to leave the office, dissuading me from my normal casual saunter to the local bookshop so I had to resort to this book, hitherto unregarded in a corner of my desk.

Well, how fortunate was I? This is an enthralling book, and I am very glad that I came to read it, however fortuitous that outcome might have been.

It is, basically, a series of reminiscences from Hennessey who served in the Grenadier Guards and completed various tours of service in Afghanistan, and recounted some of his experiences in his previous book, "The Junior Officers' Reading Club". This book focuses particularly on his role as a mentor to the Afghan National Army which is increasingly taking over the responsibility for maintaining the peace as the British and American forces withdraw.

There are the predictable contrasts when the ex-Sandhurst Hennessey finds himself grappling with liaison with a ragged, ill-equipped and frequently ill-disciplined bands of Afghan "warriors" (rather than mere soldiers). However, Hennessey soon came to cherish his role and his respect, and indeed affection, for his Afghan charges soon shines through.

Hennessey writes lucidly and has a great facility for stirring the reader's empathy. His accounts of the various Afghan troops with whom he worked , and with whom he shared a number of hair-raising are insightful and never patronising, and his descriptions of the Afghan terrain or the terrors to be faced down during night patrols have a forceful immediacy. ( )