This was the book that I had wanted to write for a long time, but at some risk because of limited British interest of the war on the Eastern Front, remedied temporarily by Anthony Beevor’s success with his book Stalingrad.

War Without Garlands is a hard hitting and frank appraisal of the brutality of war and was to some extent influenced by my Gulf War and Bosnian operational experiences.

During the first Gulf War in 1991 I maintained a daily journal, which I religiously maintained from the moment I was warned off to go until I got back. Having been extensively exposed to war time diaries with the first two books I appreciated I needed to write what I saw and felt it, with no holds barred and not with an eye for future publication. Even under the pressure of operations during the invasion of Iraq I might occasionally skip a day or two, but then immediately wrote my impressions up before memories dimmed. I disciplined myself to write without restraint, ignoring the need for security and frequently – as one does – changed my mind about personalities and events and recorded rumours, because that too has an insidious effect on attitudes.

As a consequence the diary not available, without serious editing, for publication, but it was a useful reminder of what to look for in other people’s wartime accounts and a selection filter to settle the credibility of accounts I used in War Without Garlands. Like the diary, it produced grim reading.

I was serving in Germany again when I came to write it, this time a staff officer at the NATO Central Land Command Headquarters (LANDCENT) in Heidelburg and AFCENT in Holland. Like for It Never Snows in September I managed to pick up a lot of original German material. Because of the pressure of work - I was Military Assistant to two NATO four-star Generals - it was difficult to find time to write. Some of it occurred during leave and many late nights.

Coincidental with publication I was posted to a fascinating job in South Africa, where I was to spend the next two and a half years. I had visions of producing books on the Zulu and Boer Wars and researched and visited the sites accordingly. The down side was that far from England I lost all control of reviews for …Garlands, which unfortunately was insufficiently gripped by my publisher. Yet for me, the book remained an important personal milestone.