02/12/2007
Itâs been done before, but it is still a clever idea â an anthology of interviews of military men, describing their wartime experiences. In this case, it is 25 medal-winners from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, assembled under the title
In Foreign Fields by Dan Collins, writer and former journalist, who freely admits that he "has never fought a day in his life".
His lack of military experience, however, does not hinder the enterprise. Collins does not seek to impose his own personality on his subjects and lets them talk freely, describing their own experiences, subject to only the lightest of editing. The hand of the author though, is present throughout, as he frames each interview in a coherent structure, deftly interwoven with extracts from each of the medal-winners' citations.
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HERECOMMENT THREAD
