Owain Mulligan

What’s life as a modern soldier really like? In this frank, funny and surprising insight, Iraq war veteran Owain Mulligan takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of how he accidentally enlisted. As a member of the Territorial Army, Mulligan hoped to swap teaching in a tough school for service in Iraq. When the job in headquarters he’d been expecting didn’t materialise, he instead found himself in Basra in 2006, during one of the most violent periods of the conflict, facing danger not just from militias, but also from faulty equipment and a chain of command that seemed determined to get him killed.