ISBN 978-0-670-91604-7

This book concentrates mainly on Dunkerque, The Falklands and Afghanistan. The improved quality of training and provision of modern equipment for today's combat medical technician/paramedic is gone into in detail.

The authors repeatedly return to the question of how far forward doctors should be deployed without questioning whether forward deployment of such a highly trained and scarce resource would improve the survival rates of a significant number of wounded.

Would the statistics be better compared to those who had been treated by the combat paramedics alone ?

Perhaps the paramedic with tourniquets, airways, QuikClot, splints and morphine can do all that the doctor can in almost all of the cases? The current provision of Role 1 medical care - immediate care supervised by a doctor - is probably ideal.

Not only do the authors praise those amputees who now indulge in all sorts of sports and show great enthusiasm for life but most properly devote a chapter to those who are deeply affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We are left to ponder the outcome for those wounded who cannot find re-employment either inside or outside the services.

The "Arithmetic of the Frontier" does not change

"A scrimmage in a border station-
A canter down some dark defile-
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail-"

Rudyard Kipling