Going to the Wars

A superb account of journalists, soldiers and the experience of modern battle, written by one of the greatest war reporters of our time' Robert Harris
In his autobiography, Max Hastings records his experiences reporting from the battlefields of Northern Ireland, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, Rhodesia and other trouble spots. It is also the story of a self-confessed coward, a writer with heroic ambitions but knowing he did not have what it takes to be a hero himself.
"SOLDIERS AND JOURNALISTS make uneasy bedfellows. Mem- bers of any decent army, navy or air force are formed in a tradition of duty, discipline, honour, teamwork, sacrifice. Jour-
nalists are individualists, often even anarchists. Whoever heard
of a successful reporter respectful of regulations and hierarchies? To the eye of your average regimental officer, correspondents are irresponsible, disloyal, undisciplined. Soldiers have to see things through to the end. Journalists almost never do. After the Falklands War, Captain Jeremy Black, RN, vented his disgust about the selfishness of the reporters he carried on his own ship, the carrier Invincible. Soldiers and sailors of all nationalities have echoed his sentiments through the ages. Kitchener's pithy remark about drunken swabs has passed into Fleet Street legend. The commanding officer of 2 Para, with whom I marched to the edge of Port Stanley in 1982 before the unit was ordered to halt and I went on alone in pursuit of a scoop, said afterwards that he would never take me on an operation again, because he thought my behaviour so irrespon- sible. I wasn't too impressed with him either."