Gunning it into al-Amarah
From our US edition
James Jeffrey served in the British Army for nine years, from his commissioning as a second lieutenant shortly after 9/11 to leaving as a captain in 2010. He served in Iraq in 2004 as a tank commander with the Queen’s Royal Lancers, providing armored support to the 1st Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, followed by another tour in 2006. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 with the headquarters of the Welsh Guards Battle Group on Operation Herrick 10, during which the regiment’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Rupert Thorneloe, was killed by a Taliban IED and became the first commanding officer killed in action since the 1982 Falklands War. Jeffrey now works as a writer and a journalist. Read his Veterans Day poems here.