One moment the villagers had been serenely going about their business, the next they erupted into a maelstrom of chaotic movement and panic. Instead, the powers that be had decided to send a detachment of Royal Marines to find out exactly what was going on. The control I had over my emotions meant that I didn’t just surrender to my body and let my training take over; when I needed to I could override the physical impulses that had been drilled into me so many times that they had almost become automatic, like breathing.

And we were told that the Taliban were storing all sorts of illicit equipment, using the village as a centre for dishing out improvised explosive device components and weapons. It’s when your mental and physical sides are out of whack that you feel lost, have that sense that you’re failing to reach your potential or just end up making the same bad decision over and over again. However, I am pleased and satisfied by the read and will be making a few key adjustments to my outlook going forward. According to Wikipedia, Middleton was convicted of the unlawful wounding of one police officer and common assault upon a second in 2013.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. And there was shitloads of money, including wads and wads of cash in the cars that had been trying to get away. If you want to skip all the droning on, just turn to the last page of the chapter and read the lessons. I shaded my eyes with my hand for a second, tried to block out the insistent scream of the helicopter’s engines and thought about what had brought a group of Royal Marines to a seemingly unremarkable settlement in a remote part of Afghanistan.

Learning from other people's mistakes is one thing, but trying to make something sound easy when you've failed to do it yourself is completely different. After twenty minutes or so the crowds had calmed down and we could get on with what we had been sent to do. The thing I like about Ants books is that he tells you these extreme stories from the forces and then translates them into relatable stories for those who aren’t in the forces.

However I found that the lessons /tips that flow from those stories are told in a rather disjointed and random way and are sometimes contradictory. The brilliant new book from the Chief Instructor of SAS: Australia that will explain the principles behind maintaining a healthy mind and body. The chaos only intensified once we’d leapt out of the helicopter and started to approach the settlement’s outer limits. And even for me , provided an easy reminder of some of the elements I’ve not thought about for a while.

Presented in a similar vain to the previous collections, Middleton expertly takes you on a journey of the aforementioned 15 rules. And whatever the elders might have said to our intelligence officers, we couldn’t be sure whether we’d get a friendly reception from the villagers. And while everybody in the village almost certainly knew what was happening and who was responsible, they obviously didn’t have any intention of sticking around long enough for us to ask them about it. I could feel that increasingly familiar prickle of adrenaline along my spine: my body telling me that it was prepared for whatever was about to unfold.

Which is all an elaborate way of saying that if you’re an Afghan farmer, and a pair of Chinooks explode unannounced out of the sky when you’ve barely finished your breakfast, then it can really ruin your morning. Some interesting stories - clearly he has led a colourful life so enjoyed that autobiographical aspect of the book. I even tried to take a break from this one, read something completely different and then come back to it. They’d left it to the hardened criminals operating in the village to sell all the weapons and drugs.