Contact

This newly expanded edition of AFN Clarke's best selling and controversial memoir CONTACT is a raw, visceral, "no-holds-barred" account from one of the men we paid to kill. When first published it caused a furore for its devastating honesty and chilling revelations. Clarke takes us into the private world of soldiers operating under extreme stress and living each day with their senses on high alert. Where the enemy wears no uniform and shoots from the shadows, and the bomber's trip-wire is an ever-present nightmare. We experience their emotions, fear, courage, humour, bravado and the anguish of death. In this powerful classic, Clarke vividly recounts his experiences of two tours in Northern Ireland (in Belfast and Crossmaglen) as a Platoon Commander with Britain's elite Parachute Regiment during the blood soaked 1970's. The dangers, political agendas and religious roots underlying the conflict are eerily and heartbreakingly similar to Iraq and Afghanistan today, where soldiers are ordered to hold the lines in an ancient quarrel they have little affinity for, but whose consequences are deadly. This expanded edition includes a section omitted by the publisher from the original book, where Clarke reveals what it was like to be in his twenties, go to hell and come back having nearly died with half his insides missing, suffering from PTSD and being expected to return to a "normal life." It's a story of the scars of war that affect generations on all sides of a conflict. Of heartache, courage and hope for peace. (Available as an ebook and paperback.) REVIEWS ..".the best account we have had of what it is like to serve in Northern Ireland..." Richard West, The Times Literary Supplement. " ... a major contribution to our understanding of war and how people act ... Contact is the…