Author: Greg Waggett
ISBN No: 978 0 9557047
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 191
Publisher: Oak Publishing, West Sussex RH 15 9QU
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
A former Army officer with a sense of adventure tells his story of security work in some of the world’s most difficult spots.
So why do PMC (private security company) casualties get less publicity? “In my view it is simply because you do your job more as a condottiere in a role that is an adjunct, albeit a vital one, compared to the regular soldier who follows his vocation centre-stage in the more formalised conflict. Fair enough. Nobody complains.” So writes Greg Waggett, a 1970s Army captain, who found himself at a loose end then in a PSC in Basra in 2004, earning £300 a day. In My Blood is his memoir, in an easy to read and enjoyable style, of tragic and fascinating Iraq. Arguably most of interest are his chapters on Africa: on Juba in southern Sudan, when Waggett had to deal with a troublesome major-general. When arrested, Waggett climbed walls to escape, only for his colleagues to convince him to return to his cell (just in time) because they were arranging his release. Join a PSC and see the world, as you might say. Waggett plainly relished the characters and variety of the PSC life, even in his mid-50s. His writing is fresh and honest – too much so, at times. He carries out a security survey in Nairobi by walking around ‘wearing an expression of gravitas and looking thoughtfully into the middle distance’. Yet his story shows that success – even survival – in security is about reading people and situations, and diplomacy, in places not really dangerous ‘but if you go looking for trouble it won’t take you long to find it’.
