The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars - Softcover

Hennessey, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594484791 ISBN 13: 9781594484797

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2010

Synopsis

Hailed as a classic of war writing in the U.K., The Junior Officers' Reading Club is a revelatory first-hand account of a young enlistee's profound coming of age. Attempting to stave off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by losing themselves in the dusty paperbacks on the transit-camp bookshelves, Hennessey and a handful of his pals from military academy form the Junior Officers' Reading Club. By the time he reaches Afghanistan and the rest of the club are scattered across the Middle East, they are no longer cheerfully overconfident young recruits, hungering for action and glory. Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic, sometimes exhilarating violence, frequent boredom, and almost overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience and the way we fight today.

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Review:

"Articulate and unsparing...[an] unforgettable account of how modern warfare both broadened and unsettled a young soldier."
-"The New York Times Book Review "

"As the art of warfare has transformed from trenches and Maginot Lines to guerrilla terrorism and nation-building, a new strain of existentialism has emerged: the boredom of war. Patrick Hennessey, a captain in the British Army, captures that ennui perfectly...[he] wields his words as impressively as he does his weapons. "
-"Entertainment Weekly"

"Unlike the chiseled journalists who go to observe and report, Hennessey was in the shit himself. His first (and hopefully not only) book tempers the rigors of war with youthful irreverence."
-"Time Out New York "

From the Back Cover:

We founded the Junior Officers' Reading Club in the heat of the Southern Iraqi desert. Marlow and me, the smart-alec Oxford boys, with surfer dude Harrison and the attached Coldstreamers. Basking in boxers on improvised sun-loungers, we snatched quick half-hour escapes from the oppressive heat and boredom routine - caught our breath among the books, wallowing after patrols and riding the adrenaline come-down. We might have thought we were the Army's Bright Young Things, but we weren't the first and we won't be the last.

The Club was a product of a busy Army, a post-9/11 Army of graduates and wise-arse kids up to their elbows in the Middle East who would do more and see more in five years than our fathers and uncles had packed into twenty-two. 'Too Cool for School' was what we'd been called by those higher up than us and in a way they were right: what did we know just because we'd had a few scraps in the desert? Those above us had probably been to the Gulf back in '91, were probably trained by those returning from the Falklands, who in turn were instructed by grizzly old-timers sporting proud racks of World War Two medals, chests weighed down by North-west Europe and Northern Desert Stars, which told of something greater than we could comprehend, the stuff of history imagined in black and white when no-one was anyone without an MC. Our grandfathers were heroes, whatever that meant, and they had taught the legends who charged up Tumbledown and who had returned to teach us.

We who didn't believe them.

We who had scoffed as we crawled up and down Welsh hills and pretended to scream as we stabbed sandbags on the bayonet assault course. We tried to resurrect the Club at the start of our Afghan tour. Same sort of base, same sort of desert, just a few thousand miles the other side of Iran. By the end of the first month it was obvious that there would be no Club. Each of us, wherever we were and if we could at all, would be reading alone. We went into battle with sketch pads in our daysacks and i-pods on the radio, thinking we knew better than what had gone before.

In the end we did and, of course, we didn't.

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1594484791
• ISBN 13: 9781594484797
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336