'I was completely bowled over by Kailash's book & read it with a beating heart & dry mouth I felt as though I was at his side hearing the shells & bullets enjoying the jokes & listening in the scary dead of night The skill with which he has included his childhood & training is immense always discovered with ease in the narrative it actually felt as though I was watching was IN a film with him It brought me nearer than I have ever been not only to the mind of the universal soldier but to a hill boy of Nepal & a hugely impressive Gurkha I raced through it & couldn't put it down it reads like a thriller If you want to know anything about the Gurkhas read this book & be prepared for a thrilling & dangerous trip' Joanna Lumley In the summer of 2006 Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve & occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand He was told to prepare for a forty-eight hour operation In the end he & his men were under siege for thirty-one days
- one of the longest such sieges in the whole of the Afghan campaign Kailash Limbu recalls the terrifying & exciting details of those thirty-one days
- in which they killed an estimated one hundred Taliban fighters
- & intersperses them with the story of his own life as a villager from the Himalayas He grew up in a place without roads or electricity & didn't see a car until he was fifteen Kailash's descriptions of Gurkha training & rituals
- including how to use the lethal Kukri knife
- are eye-opening & fascinating They combine with the story of his time in Helmand to create a unique account of one man's life as a Gurkha