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Tough is not enough. Heroic is only half the story.
Controversial, yes...and more. This is The Paras, in their own words.
A military journey told by those who were there, on the spot, or jumping
out of the planes, or fighting on the bridge at Arnhem until the Nazis
blew them off or smashed up at Warrenpoint in the infamous IRA massacre
or charging across Goose Green and over Mount Longdon, trampling all
in their path.
Bloody, fearful, frightening stories.
Every major event in the full 60 year history of The
Parachute Regiment to the end of the 20th Century has been careful reconstructed,
and told in the 'I was there' mode by men who were there, a massive
jigsaw of first-person testimony skilfully and dramatically drawn together
by John Parker in this, the latest in his series on the stark underbelly
of British military history.
The accounts are filled with incredible feats of human
endurance and courage, told side by side with admissions of personal
acts of horror -- 'So we drew straws and shot him' -- and of disgust,
fear and loathing of the sights and sounds of war. Formed at Winston
Churchill's personal insistence following the Nazi blitzkreig of western
Europe, The Parachute Regiment was slow to take off...but soon made
up for lost time and, combining with other units of Britain's fledgling
airborne forces, more than 100,000 men engaged in some of the most spectacular
action of World War 11 for which the Germans themselves christened them
The Red Devils.
The Paras have never been out of action since, beginning
with the immediate post-war crisis in Palestine where they took the
brunt of attacks from the Zionist terror gangs; following on throughout
the 1950s and 60s when they were deployed to some of Britain's wild
colonial wars, heavily committed to the shambolic and disastrous attack
on Egypt over Suez, fighting the Greek terrorists in Cyprus, Communist
terrorists in Malaya, Borneo and Aden, and onwards through the Falklands,
the VC's, into modern times in actions such as Kosovo, and taking the
flak, in more ways than one, in Northern Ireland. There, the Parachute
Regiment has been on continuous duty since 1969, suffering a very large
number of casualties in the process and at the same time thrust by politicians
into the forefront of one of the most appalling events in the history
of the Troubles, Bloody Sunday. The reality of it all now comes to life...
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Published in hardback by Metro, Spring 2000; and
in soft cover by Blake in 2003 |
