The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars [Hardcover]

Patrick Hennessey reports of his time in the British Army, with tours of duty to Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands before resigning. It starts with the Sandhurst experience, and then goes into each deployment, with the lion share being dedicated to Afghanistan, where the author's real fighting took place.

The initial training in Sandhurst is probably also the only episode, where the 'reading' element is really present, with the author ruminating on Dixon's On The Psychology Of Military Incompetence (Pimlico) (a book I would highly recommend) and how the training tends to always prepare the officers (and troops) for fighting the last war, not the current, or next one. While this section of the book is insightful, the author fails to translate how the training, which he felt was largely useless, transformed him into a competent fighter / officer, which he claims to have become as a result ('when the training kicked in') - On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society does a much better job here.

While the author's time in Bosnia seems to have been spent hankering for stories one could tell fawning ex-girlfriends (which did not really materialize), and Iraq was equally disappointing for the author for the lack of action, he finally seems to have gotten his fill of firefights in Afghanistan. This part of the book is fairly quick to read but not necessarily the best. Somehow the author left me cold here - the fire fights were hardly described, it was more about the author finally being satisfied at having participated in real combat and not having been found wanting.

The attitude that his unit was the one who practically singlehandedly managed the whole affair, with a bit of help from the Afghan National Army, may well upset other soldiers, who have served in the same conflict - the constant tirades against REMFs could well ruffle some feathers, too.

The Reading Club aspect is also more mentioned in the title than built upon in the book. We find out that he read a couple of pages of Ayn Rand, a 100 or so of Don Quixote and some pulp.

In spite of the criticisms the book does show something important - namely the attitude of the current generation, who are fighting the wars. While one would hope for an officer corps more mature, the author's account at least provides an honest account. And reading that may well help explain some of the occurences happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is not of the quality of Matterhorn or The Hidden War: A True Story of War in Afghanistan (if you want the same theatre of operations) and while I would not say the author is an outstanding combination of a soldier who can write (the many errors as noted by some other reviewers attest to that), the book does inspire reflection.

Overall a decent summer read, which will certainly go down better with late teens and twentysomethings, and may - as already noted, annoy or anger many (ex-) servicemen, who would feel attacked.

Firstly I was quite put off by the title. I thought it would be another boring account of politics within the military but I was proved very wrong. If you get the chance to listen to the readings from radio 4's book of the week (download from BBC I player) then you are in for a treat. This is compelling stuff and now having read the whole book I can honestly say it is up there with Dan Mills and Sniper One and Robert Mason's Chickenhawk.
The real ups and downs of a soldiers life in war at peace and when it is downright unfair. All here to digest. Written in plain speak making it easy to follow and digest unlike some more boring accounts by journalists or so called established writers this is written by a soldier for soldiers. If you buy one book this year then make it this one!!!
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Have just finished this after a whizzing through it in about 5 days while on holiday. I have very mixed feelings. It's certainly very readable and fluently written and does provide some real insight into the workings of the army. There is also something very authentic about his kinetic descriptions of combat in the second half of the book. But, boy, did I not warm to Mr Hennessy.

I presume he set out for this to be a 'searingly honest' account of his experiences, but in many cases his honesty just served to reinforce every mild and (previously un-informed) prejudice I had about Guards officers. This privately-educated Oxbridge graduate talks about how amazingly 'diverse' the intake is at Sandhurst. He goes on to describe his role in looking after his men as akin to that of a primary school teacher and slags off the officers who have made it up through the ranks (as well as numerous other regiments and other parts of the armed forces). He's quite honest about wanting to look cool in his uniform and impress the ladies, thinks having his own orderly and hanging around in the mess is great and seems utterly (and depressingly) obsessed with creating video montages of his tours - as if none of it is real until edited down into some snappy clips with thumping background music which can be used to impress people. In fact there seems to be quite a lot about wanting to impress people in here - much talk of not being allowed to wear sunglasses.

I quite liked his critique of the pointlessness of much of the training he received at Sandhurst but after his endless moaning about wanting to see some action I was expecting some real insight into the horrors of combat. Instead there are repetitive descriptions of how much 'fun' it is shoot people and be involved in a battle all of which I found slightly chilling.

So worth a read but not great. I hope Mr H has since matured considerably.