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Andrew Sharples' top 10 war memoirs

From thrilling accounts of derring-do to bitter descriptions of the human fallout, here are 10 memoirs of conflict which inspired and moved me

I ’ve always been fascinated by war. From the earliest age, I loved reading books on the subject and was captivated by stories of courage and resourcefulness under fire. Eventually I joined the army to experience war for myself but, despite a tour of duty in Iraq, I left after four years, without having fired a shot in anger, to pursue a career in journalism. When my friend Mark Evans asked me to write Code Black with him, the story of his war in Afghanistan and the mental scars it inflicted, I got to hear first-hand what it was like to go into combat. Listening to him describe his experiences was compelling but it also reminded me of the human cost of war. During countless hours spent talking, we discovered that we’d read many of the same memoirs, some of which had inspired us, while others made us doubt our motivations. Here are 10 of the most remarkable.

1. Memoirs of An Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon

This book starkly demonstrates how exposure to the brutality and futility of war is a potent antidote to the restless enthusiasm of youth. Most who join up would recognise something of themselves in Sassoon’s description of a young man hungry for action, desperate to win the respect of his peers. Too many would also identify with the man portrayed at the end, broken by the death he’d seen and furious with the world around him.

2. The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey

This was the first book about the war in Afghanistan I could properly relate to. Patrick Hennessey trained with me at Sandhurst and we served in Iraq at the same time. In The Junior Officers’ Reading Club he brings to life what it was like to join the army in the post 9/11 world, with the promise that we, unlike the previous generation, would get to fight. When reality fails to live up to expectations on a relatively peaceful tour in Iraq, the author’s frustration begins to build. He finally gets everything he joined for and more when he reaches Helmand.

3. My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd

For a certain kind of person war is a drug and nowhere is that more apparent than in Anthony Loyd’s account of his time as a correspondent in Bosnia. While immersed in the conflict, Loyd is high on adrenaline, but on returning home, the only way he can achieve that rush is through heroin, and he slips into addiction. The beauty of the prose urged me forward but every few pages the description of a fresh horror stopped me dead in my tracks.

4. Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean

Some books seem to have been written expressly to remind me how dull my life has been and how meagre my accomplishments. Eastern Approaches is certainly one of those books. Fitzroy Maclean takes us along with him on his adventures, pitting his wits against the NKVD in Soviet Russia, fighting with the SAS in the Western Desert, and parachuting into Yugoslavia to track down Tito. He’s a British adventurer of the old school and stories like his make the world a more exciting place.

5. Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab

Bravo Two Zero was probably the first war memoir I ever read and my introduction to the world of special forces. I devoured it in a single sitting, captivated by the sheer toughness of these SAS men who seemed then, as they do now, positively superhuman. It made me feel I was there, right in the middle of a desperate firefight and then, later, caged in a dank prison cell, waiting to be tortured. The story is brutal but as a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to be tested in the same way as McNab and his comrades.

6. Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall by Spike Milligan

Soldiers find a lot to laugh about in war, but Spike Milligan’s surreal take on the second world war is unparalleled. Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall is the fourth volume of his memoirs and covers Spike’s time fighting in Italy in 1943. “I was wondering about the landing,” says one soldier on a ship off the Italian coast. “Don’t worry about the landing, I’ll Hoover it in the morning,” replies Spike. The gags keep coming, even as the fighting intensifies, but eventually the strain begins to take its toll, even on Spike. The book ends with the author suffering what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and being demoted for unreliable conduct. “I am by now completely demoralised,” he writes. “All the laughing had stopped.”

7. The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn

Martha Gellhorn is one of the most celebrated war correspondents of the 20th century and this collection of her journalism shows why. Starting with the Spanish civil war, she covered conflicts around the world for more than 50 years, putting herself in the line of fire time and again. Many books speak about the barbarity of war, and this one does too. What makes it special for me though is how it reminds us that war can also sometimes be deeply, regrettably necessary.

8. Dispatches by Michael Herr

I reread Dispatches recently and what struck me most was not the descriptions of combat that blew me away the first time – although these are still fiercely vivid – but rather the characters Michael Herr meets in Vietnam. In just a few short sentences, Herr manages to sum up entire personalities. There’s the veteran killer who’s left sanity far behind; the war-chasing journalists, desperate for adrenaline and glory; and, of course, the average grunts who are slogging their way through, longing just to get back home. You find the same types in every warzone across the world, but no writer has done a better job of cataloguing them and capturing what war has done to make them how they are.

9. A Guards Officer in the Peninsula And at Waterloo: The Letters of Captain George Bowles, Coldstream Guards 1807-1819 by George Bowles

This collection of a Guards officer’s letters home provides a fascinating insight into what it was like to fight in Wellington’s army against Napoleon. Because the author didn’t write with the intention of being published, it is much more intimate than most memoirs. The book highlights how hard it was to be away from family for so long. Unlike in today’s wars, where British soldiers go on tour for six-month stints, Bowles was campaigning for the best part of 12 years. I find the minutiae of military life that he describes fascinating. Many of the letters deal with his continuing quest to procure a good horse. Little has changed – soldiers still obsess about having the best kit and their letters home are full of sentiments that Bowles and his comrades would instantly recognise.

10. Wild Swans by Jung Chang

This isn’t a war memoir in the strictest sense, but as it covers almost 100 years of China’s history, armed conflict looms large. Jung Chang tells the story of three generations of women in her family – her grandmother, mother and the author herself. The book opens with the violent break-up of imperial China, then moves on to the Japanese invasion and occupation, before the communists take over at the end of the second world war. It describes with exceptional clarity the suffering of the Chinese population, serving as a powerful reminder that it is often civilians, not soldiers, that endure the worst horrors of war.

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