At the age of 19 former juvenile criminal Bernard O'Mahoney joined tbe British Army to escape a looming prison sentence. He signed up with a tank regiment he thought would never serve in Northern Ireland. But before long he found himself foot-slogging on the border in the constituency of Bobby Sands just as the imprisoned republican MP approached the end of his hunger strike - and the north looked set to go up in flames.
In his determination to get home alive Bernard trampled on civilised values and the rule of law. Soldier of the Queen is the shocking story of what he got up to. Many readers will find him and his revelations distasteful and outrageous. But the strength of his account lies in the unblinking honesty with which he tells it, neither trying to hide the sort of person he was then, nor offering easy excuses to explain the behaviour of himself and his unit, the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.
Almost all previous accounts of army life in Northern Ireland have been written by members of elite or specialists units. Soldier of the Queen gives the ordinary British squaddie's viewpoint of life on the ground at the height of the 'dirty war'. This is a book which will disturb those readers used to the usual sanitised accounts of heroics performed by disciplined and decent soldiers.