_A Royal Marine Commando in Iraq and Afghanistan_ is a raw and unfiltered account of a life lived at full throttle, through war zones, oceans and the uneasy quiet that follows survival.
Told through a series of vivid autobiographical vignettes, the book follows Adam Lison, a Royal Marines Commando who completed 22 years of active service and receiving a Mention in Dispatches for his bravery. During that time, Adam saw fierce combat in four operational tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. The combat is described without polish or bravado: being blown up twenty-two times by IED strikes and involved in countless firefights and ambushes and dealing with that first moment of being face to face with the enemy.
An NCO in the thick of the action, Adam had to make instant life-or-death decisions, deciding whether to shoot through a crowd of women and children to kill a Taliban ambush team, or if he should run through a minefield after being blown up in a Land Rover to check on his wagon crew? Should he run the gauntlet of heavy machine gun fire to get more ammunition and report the situation to his officers – or does he stay and fight? Does he disobey orders which he believes could imperil his team when surrounded by more than forty Taliban? These are just some of the hair-raising episodes told in exciting detail in the engrossing memoir.
When the fighting stops, the story doesn’t. The transition back to civilian life proves disorientating and, at times, destructive for Adam. Long stretches of leave are filled with restlessness, and a growing sense of being untethered from purpose. Adam explores the psychological whiplash of moving from hyper-alert danger to normality in a matter of days, and the quiet damage that can follow when there is no space to decompress.
Running parallel to the battlefield narrative is Adam’s lifelong relationship with the ocean. Surfing becomes both escape and reckoning which encapsulates another environment where risk is real, mistakes are punished, and humility is mandatory. From dawn patrols on the North Devon coast to near-fatal encounters with reefs and rips, the sea mirrors the same lessons learned in combat: respect, patience, and knowing when to fight and when to let go.
