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Author: Scott White
ISBN No: 9781036180294
Review date: 18/07/2026
No of pages: 184
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Publisher URL:
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Silent-War-Hardback/p/61530
Year of publication: 30/08/2026
Brief:
price
£17.60
The memoir opens in November 2003, and after an interview in London the author, drawn by the money and the adventure, has gone to Iraq to do close protection for the US Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors: โItโs all about keeping them alive while they try to rebuild parts of this broken country.โ
The book, sub-titled ‘A Private Military Contractorโs Memoir from Edinburgh to Baghdad‘ closes in November 2021. Is it a happy ending? Largely, from the sounds of it โ without giving anything away to spoil it for the reader. As for work, heโs in the fire service. โI still have the odd rough day. Flashbacks. Triggers. Nights where I lie awake, reflecting on my life, my memories. But I donโt live there any more. I donโt drown in it. Iโm living again.โ
The Circuit
In between is his time doing dangerous private military security in Iraq, on โthe circuitโ or โgameโ. As in so many memoirs of that era and such work, it becomes too much; the noise of violence even outside a motel window, besides the stench of raw sewage, the poverty and the heat, quite apart from the ever present threats and the loss of friends. The โcircuitโ isnโt glamourised either. For one thing, itโs riven by jealousy: โThereโs always someone watching, always someone waiting for a chance to pull you down rather than put the work in themselves.โ
PTSD
The author by the end of the 2000s knows heโs suffering from PTSD. โIโm not stupid. And I know Iโm not alone, some of the lads I worked with, are back home feeling the same. Lost. Numb. Itโs like we all got shipped back in pieces, expected to just slot back into normal life. But I canโt. I donโt know how.โ In the gym locally he gets talking with someone; โturns out he runs a security company and runs the doors in a couple of clubs in town. Heโs asked me if I fancied working a couple of shifts a week for him. this could be something I need right now. A distraction.โ Also, the author jumps at some overseas work which lands him in Lithuania to (covertly) follow and protect the staff of a โdodgy bankโ; including a woman tailed by the author, who was under surveillance from another car. Whether the author and fellow contract operatives could carry or use a gun in the Baltic country was uncertain; โweโd stash a few strategically in the vehicles, just in case things went sidewaysโ. That job takes an unexpected turn, but safe for the author.
General’s team
Something not aired as much as it might in private security, or indeed other occupations such as lorry driving or the emergency services, is that all the work is not the same; if the occupation is chronically short of the right talent, or enough bodies at all, the best jobs (whether in terms of pay, conditions or simply bragging rights) are never short of applicants. So it is for the author and hearing of a job as one of a team of six protecting a senior American general. How to land such a job, protecting a commander, when youโre not even of the nationality of the general; and a contractor, not in the US Army? The author has in his favour years of dealing with diplomats, celebrities and corporate heads. People who expect you to vanish into the background until something goes wrong and then fix it without drama. That jobโs not just about soldiering. Itโs about presence, how you carry yourself, how you read a room and put clients at ease without saying much.โ
About CP
Elsewhere the author notes that close protection is about precision, anticipation, and control. โItโs about reading a situation before anything happens, scanning a street corner and spotting a threat before it even materialises. Youโve got to be switched on 24/7, ready to extract your principal under fire, navigate IED-riddled roads, or get them out of a contact zone with no warning and no backup. Itโs not just muscle and rifles, itโs planning, movement drills, low-profile ops, deception tactics.โ He gets the job and is one of โthe generalโs teamโ. The general can fly by aircraft including his own jet; โa Gucci piece of kit like you see in the movies. It feels like flying on a mini-Air Force One. Weโre moving across the Middle East like ghosts, in and out of high, security zones, Quatar, Afghanistan, Dubai no drama.โ As any reader might feel, itโs โa bit of glamourโ; but only a bit, For instance, while the general meets the command in chief General David Petraeus, the bodyguards sit in the kitchen. Two bodyguards are by the general at all times: โHeโs never alone, not even when he nips off for a toilet break.โ When the general leaves from the airstrip at the end of his tour, he thanks the bodyguards, for keeping him alive: โGod bless you. Iโll never forget you.โ Though guarding a general is a โgreat gigโ โ the fellow bodyguards are excellent, the general appreciative โ the author gets itchy feet: โIโve been in and out of war zones for seven years almost and I think I need a change. I am making a lot of money but Iโm not getting the chance to enjoy it.โ By chance, his wife has an accident which means the author has to return home and take up caring duties.
Work
Later on he writes of the โever growing reel of madnessโ. A weight hangs over him, even on leave at home in Edinburgh, โwhen Iโm supposed to be relaxingโ. As so many in the private military sector, like in the armed forces and the police, he finds the gulf between civilian, family life and the hard reality of work โ car bombs and other explosions, and ambushes – jarring (โitโs like Iโve become an intruder in my own homeโ). The book not only gives an insight into the nuts and bolts of private military work, but more subtly how to handle the work (a โtwisted sense of humour โฆ. gets you through the darker daysโ) and find a job, and further jobs (the most attractive roles arenโt advertised, but โwhisperedโ, the author says in a telling, passing phrase). Life in the โGreen Zoneโ of Baghdad was well and fully chronicled at the time and soon after, and in some ways feels a long time ago. The author notes how strangely normal it was inside that unreal โzoneโ; gyms, โair conditioning and rows of food countersโ. The biggest compliment that we can pay about this well-written, most readable and candid – at times painfully so – book is to wish that the author gives us a further volume, whether of those close protection days or in the fire service now.
