Certainly gives a completely new attitude to reading the endless "British soldier killed in Afghanistan" news. Before it was a meaningless statistic, after reading this book you have some inkling of what's actually going on in there. I learned more about the war there from this book than I have in a decade of reading newspaper articles about the war.

If that's all the book had going for it, it'd be enough, but it's also wildly entertaining. It almost manages to achieve the impossible, i.e. making me miss my days of stripping down my assault rifle blindfolded in the Finnish army. This effect lasts for a few seconds at a time and then reality kicks back in and I remember how much I used to hate being in the military.