Book Review: Sniper One

A TRUE STORY

Sgt Dan Mills writes a telling personal story of an ‘exciting’ yet very dangerous tour in Al Amarah, Iraq. From landing in Iraq on the 7th April 2004, a year since the city had fallen and Hussein had been ousted, Sgt Mills from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and the rest of his battalion were supposed to be there to ‘win hearts and minds’, they were soon fighting one of the hardest and longest battles since World War 2.

It didn’t take long for the whole world to turn against them in Al Amarah, the Moqtadr Al Sadr Brigade’s were definitely against why they were there and with an intelligence mistake Mills and the rest of his platoon stuck their heads into the lions head within the first few hours they were there. They had been told that they will probably not see any action, from then on they realised they’d walked straight into hell on earth.

The book is written in a first person scenario of Mills being the head shed of sniper platoon in Y Company, PWRR. The snipers were lucky to even get the chance to go to Iraq and use their ‘long’s’, the British L96 sniper rifle as the Regiment chose them instead of the Mortar’s. This turned out to be a bad mistake as after the first contact with Dan’s team the Regiment realised they would be needing both sets of equipment… regularly.