Author guest post from Matt Okuhara.

“You won’t learn anything in the infantry! If you’re going to join the army, join a part where they’ll actually teach you something.” Stern words—but kind advice—from my father.

I was eighteen, and my mind was already made up. I wanted to join the infantry. And not just any infantry: my local regiment. “Gloucester boys join the Glosters,” as they used to say.

Training didn’t take long. I had no plans to make a career of the Army, and the sign outside the Army Reserve Centre had already convinced me. “It’s part-time—but a real soldier’s job!” That sounded good enough. A real soldier, with plenty of time to myself? “Where do I sign?”

Five weekends and a two-week training camp later, I was—technically—a trained killer. Though not much of one. I didn’t like killing. I’d been a vegetarian since the age of eight. I also didn’t like being shouted at. But it wasn’t full-time, and the Iraq War seemed far away. They wouldn’t call me up. Would they?

Wrong.

With roughly thirty days of military experience under my belt and knowing exactly no one from my Battalion, the call-up papers arrived. I was going to war.

S**t.

The Rifle Volunteers, my unit, draws its personnel from across the South West. We’d been tasked with providing 85 officers and men to support ongoing operations in Iraq. The coalition had won the war quickly enough—but winning the peace was proving far harder, and far bloodier. Lives were being lost daily—both Iraqi and British.

Basra and Back is written from the perspective of an unlikely infantryman. Told with an abstract and unconventional sense of humour, it offers a ground-level view of life on patrol, in battle, and in the middle of the most dangerous country in the world—Iraq, 2004.

Order your copy here.