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Operation Certain Death Damien Lewis
By Anthony | March 9, 2009
After reading the Bloody Heroes special forces book by Damien Lewis and thoroughly enjoying it, I decided to give another one of his books a try.
Operation Certain Death tells the story of one of the most daring and dangerous operation the british special forces have ever undertaken. Operation Barras. In 1999, an army of around 1000 rebels known as the west side boys took hostage 11 british army personel in the jungles of Sierra Leone. After intense hostage negotiations failed it fell to a joint taskforce of 200 SBS and SAS special forces soldiers to assault the rebel stronghold and end the hostage crisis by force.
This book is a fantastic read… Once I started reading it I just didnt want to put it down, I completed the book in two days which is pretty impressive for what is quite a large book.
There is alot of detail in this book about the political situation at the time in Sierra Leone which I found quite interesting along with the additional information provided in the prologue, Authors Notes, Postscript and afterword. There is absolutely no doubt that the author spent alot of time researching this book and it shows in his writing. As in his other book I have also reviewed the writing is very well put together and sets the scene perfectly and without going into too much detail.
There are many horrifying accounts of the west side boys actions against the people of Sierra Leone which I found quite disturbing but they do add an extra dimension to the flow of the book, They also go some way to describing the type of enemy the special forces were facing when assaulting the rebel base outnumbered by a scale of 5-1.
Its absolutely true that truth is stranger than fiction and if this story wasnt true it would be very difficult to believe. Its a story of bravity, heroism, suffering, endurance and human sacrifice all rolled up into a fantastic account that I am glad I took the time to read.
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2 Responses to “Operation Certain Death Damien Lewis”
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March 18th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
[...] You can checkout my review of this book here: Operation Certain Death Damien Lewis [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 8:53 am
This was an excellent account of Operation Barras and really told you the state of the West Side Boys. Your review really does summarise the book very well. If you get chance to have a look at Damien’s website as this gives further information and photos of what not was in the book.
On a side have a read of Desert Claw and Cobra Gold, though these are not ‘true’ accounts they do make a very good read which you will probably enjoy.