Medic, by John Nichol and Tony Rennell, read by Michael Tudor Barnes (17hrs unabridged, Isis, £32.99)
My abiding, albeit blurred, image of the Falklands war is a picture of a young army medic kneeling on a boggy battlefield, one arm desperately raised above the body of a wounded soldier holding the drip he has just inserted into his arm. The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) are the unsung heroes of war. They're the ones who go in on the heels of the frontline troops to pick up the pieces, armed not with weapons but with plasma and morphine. Some of the stories in this book, of battlefield surgery coolly executed as bullets and bombs rain down, are incredible. There was the medic in Afghanistan who used his Swiss army knife to amputate what was left of a paratrooper's leg; and the doctor in 1942, adrift in the Pacific with other POWs who, when their boat was bombed, swam between the wreckage to which the survivors were clinging, improvising bandages and splints from floating debris. The Falklands field station that took in 80 casualties on the first day of fighting had an unexploded bomb embedded in the wall but, rather than risk moving his patients, the MO ordered extra sandbags. And prayed.
It was the French who pioneered frontline medicine. Two hip operations were carried out on the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon's medics had their own uniform and travelled in special carriages. The British under Wellington were contemptuous of such mollycoddling. Later, embarking for the Crimea, one British cavalry commander dismissed the chests of medical supplies on the dockside as "useless encumbrances" and left them behind. So instead of the medicine that might have reduced the spread of cholera in Scutari, the soldiers could expect only a tot of brandy laced with cayenne pepper before they died. This is an inspirational book packed with anecdotes and information which will restore your faith in humanity.It also poses darker ethical questions about the value of saving the lives of men so badly damaged physically and mentally by war that, given the choice, they would rather have died. More ex-soldiers have killed themselves since the Afghanistan war began than have been killed in battle. It's a sobering thought.
Letters from the Trenches, by Bill Lamin, read by Geoff Annis (7½hrs unabridged, Whole Story Audio, £19.99)
If, on Wednesday 7 February 2007, you had logged on to World War I Experiences of an English Soldier (wwar1.blogspot.com), you would have been able to read a letter written exactly 90 years earlier, on Wednesday 7 February 1917, from Private Harry Lamin to his family about his new life as a conscript en route for France. I didn't, but having listened to this book based on the blog, I wish I had. Harry's letters, recently discovered in a drawer in the time-honoured fashion, were edited by his grandson, who had the bright idea of blogging them in real time, so that readers, like Harry's correspondees, had to wait to hear his news and, more importantly, whether or not he survived. I won't spoil it for you.
The Pacific, by Hugh Ambrose, read by Mike Chamberlain (24hrs unabridged, Canongate, £30)
And if I were currently watching the TV series from the people who brought you Band of Brothers on which this book is based, I needn't have ploughed through this. Making books into films is hard; making films into books is impossible. Still, I know where Iwo Jima is at long last.
Sandstealers, by Ben Brown, read by Adam Sims (13½hrs unabridged, Isis, £32)
What do award-winning war correspondents such as the BBC's Ben Brown do when they've hung up their flak jackets? They write thrillers about war correspondents like tough, charismatic war junkie Danny Lowenstein, who gets kidnapped in Iraq. Fast, furious, authentic and bound for bestsellerdom.
