Sanders and Wood have produced an outstanding and judicious book on a topic fraught with difficulties. There is evident sympathy with the ordinary soldier as he adapted to a testing environment in which a vicious enemy usually had the initiative. This sympathy, however, does not lead to a superficial treatment of episodes which saw British soldiers take lives or behave unacceptably. One incident, which saw a mother of 12 blinded and disfigured by the needless firing of a rubber bullet, stands out as an example of violence begetting violence. A friend of one of her daughters would later join the IRA and be killed by the SAS in Gibraltar. Bloody Sunday is inevitably and rightly covered in some detail.
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