The Boys from Baghdad: From the Foreign Legion to the Killing Fields of Iraq

by Simon Low

As a former fighter in the legendary French Foreign Legion, Simon Low thought he had seen it all. Then he was posted to Iraq. Employed as a private military contractor — a "hired gun" — his assignment was to guard the deadly convoy routes out of Baghdad. Once there, Simon quickly realized that no one could be trusted, including the U.S. military. Whether sending him on perilously haphazard missions or, in one terrifying incident, knowingly opening fire on him, the Americans often proved as dangerous as the insurgents. Simon and his staunch "oppo" Dave faced the daily terror of suicide bombers, armed ambushes, and grenade attacks, and also had to keep a close watch on their ill-prepared Iraqi comrades. Incompetence or betrayal from within could be fatal, but a far greater fear was that of capture, with prisoners subjected to torture and slow death, while the threat of a "Baghdad Haircut" (beheading) was ever present. Commissioned to courier a large quantity of cash through bandit country, Simon lost patience with his high-handed paymasters and devised a plan of his own for the money. This is an intimate, action-packed narrative of life as a soldier of fortune in the most controversial conflict of our age. Delivered with grim, earthy humor, the narrator depicts an eyewitness account of Iraq spiraling into bloody chaos, providing a unique and uncompromising insight into the theater of war.

Genres: Nonfiction

285 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2007

Reviews

[Audrey E · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book can best be summed up with the quote: "Wrong as the invasion was -- with no weapons of mass destruction and the taste of political deceit stronger than ever -- it had given me, a professional soldier, a chance of high adventure."

[Alan Duffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gritty book which gets into the reality of the horror left to be picked up by the local Iraqis, soldiers of fortune and peace keeping forces. There was money to be made...but at what cost? Well written in the style and humour of a typical squaddy. Conveys the horror and fear of this type of conflict very well.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Dress us up as romantic soldiers of fortune, with a heroic lineage from the nobility of the Middle Ages, or post-f@!k!ng-modern, euphemised PMCs, but it wouldn’t alter the facts: we worked for large sums of money to possibly be killed and, if necessary, kill others. Enough said.”

Says Low at one point when describing what he does, so he is refreshingly frank. He is also not shy in criticising the allies presence in Iraq, describing them as a hot knife in soft butter. Low gives us a fragmented but intense window into what it’s like, operating in these war zones, as a mercenary. He reveals the comradeship, bureaucracy, greed, danger and stupidity that are all part of daily life and he also gives us a slight idea of what it’s like in the foreign legion. Some of the stories he tells of other people in other war zones are equally disturbing yet compelling, like the horror story of Belgian peacekeeper’s looking after a female Burundi politician in Rwanda, or the Aussie guy who everyone had believed to be asleep on the plane home but as they tried to wake him they discovered that he had been killed by bullets that had been fired from insurgents as they had taken off in Baghdad but no one had noticed.

Without doubt he has experienced more than his fair share of action and adventure through his work and has many a fascinating tale to tell as a result. Don’t get me wrong much of the dialogue is straight out of an 80s action movie and it is teeming with clichés, this a world where people “run hell for leather” and have “a whale of a time” and the attempts at humour are well, just not funny at all, but at the end of the day this makes for really exciting and captivating reading and he does get involved in some really intense near death situations.