Sniper One: The Blistering True Story of a British Battle Group Under Siege

ANDY McNAB
'You can taste the dust and cordite. One of the best first-hand
accounts of combat that I've ever read.'

MARK SPICER, author of Illustrated Manual of Sniper Skills
'This book may upset the system, but it's a story that should be
told ... their story matches any act of heroism in British history and
they've earned their right to be heard.'

Sunday Telegraph
'A highly-charged, action filled, adrenalin-pumped, page-turning read that, frankly, knocks the socks off all previous British accounts in this genre'

The Times
'A gritty, speedball run ... it plugs the reader straight into the blood and guts of the action'

The Sun
'The most vivid account ever of total combat on Iraq's frontline'

Synopsis
We all saw it at once. Half a dozen voices screamed 'Grenade!' simultaneously. Then everything went into slow motion. The grenade took an age to travel through its 20 metre arc. A dark, small oval-shaped package of misery the size of a peach ...April 7th 2004: a year to the day since the city had fallen. Saddam had been deposed. The Marines and the Paras were long gone and Southern Iraq rarely made it into the news. When Sgt Dan Mills and the rest of the 1st Batallion, The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment flew in, they were supposed to be winning hearts and minds. They were soon fighting for their lives. Within hours of arriving in Iraq a grenade bounced off one of the battalion's landrovers, rolled underneath and detonated. The ambush marked the beginning of a full-scale firefight during which Mills killed a man with a round that removed his assailant's head. It was going to be a long tour. Like some post-apocalyptic Mad Max nightmare, the place had gone to hell in a handcart. Temperatures on the ground often topped 50c, sewage systems that had long since packed up, the stench of cooking waste and piles of festering rubbish that grew wherever you looked.

Throat-burning winds, blast bombs and well-trained, well-organised militias armed with AKs and RPGs and a limitless supply of mortar rounds were the icing on the cake. If any of Mills' 18 man sniper platoon had thought that the people of Al Amarah were going to welcome them with open arms, they were forced to rapidly reconsider. For the next six months, isolated, besieged and under constant fire the battalion refused to give an inch. Cimic House, their HQ, may have been S$%t, but it was home. And its defence, the most intense the British army fought in 50 years, was a modern day Rorke's Drift. "Sniper One" is a breathtaking chronical of endurance, camaraderie, dark humour and courage in the face of relentless, lethal assault.

From the Back Cover
'Contact front! Contact front!' Immediately we were down on our
knees and aggressively returning fire. Then we slipped away into pairs.
While one bloke got up and sprinted 10 feet back up the alleyway, the other emptied all the rounds he could in the direction of the gunmen. Then the pair swapped roles. Fire and Manouevre, fire and manouevre.
It was like the bank robbery scene in 'Heat'. It's amazing how well you
remember it all when you need to. But still the RPK poured lead at us. A
whole burst went straight between Smudge's legs as he was stopping to turn and cover me.

'Average?!' I said as we looked at each other in amazement. Then we
carried on ...

About the Author
Sgt Dan Mills, MiD, was decorated for his command of an
eighteen-man sniper platoon during the siege of Al Amarah. During a long army career he has served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands.

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