Soldiering On, by Alan Brosnan and Duke Henry with Bob Taubert, T.E.E.S., Southaven, Mississippi, 2002, 330pp.
Nicky Hager, review for Dominion Post
This is one of those books with soldiers, guns and an SAS badge on the cover. It is the personal stories of two New Zealanders – Alan Brosnan and Duke Henry – who joined our Special Air Service together in 1980 and then, after several years there, left to work in the international “security industry”. The book follows their “world-wide careers of adventure” to some of the 57 countries in which, between them, they have worked.
They carefully avoid revealing SAS secrets, but give an interesting and disturbing picture of the lucrative private work available to ex-NZSAS personnel. There are stories of security contracts guarding foreign mines in poor third world countries; VIP security for “the rich and famous”; mercenary contracts in Africa; and working as military training instructors for some unlovely regimes. Numerous former NZSAS colleagues and mates from the US, British and Australian special forces turn up on these contracts.
Alan Brosnan moved to the US in 1989 and set up the Tactical Explosive Entry School (which published this book). Based in Memphis, Tennessee, it teaches combat tactics Brosnan learnt in the NZSAS to “thousands of domestic military and law enforcement personnel and operators from 30 countries” (including several Latin American countries under State Department contracts).
He thinks Ronald Reagan was “truly heroic”, spends pages deriding David Lange’s “hardcore peacenik no nuclear wankers” and is a “strong supporter” of the US National Rifle Association and the death penalty. He is a part-time SWAT team member and describes 3am missions blasting his way into homes in full battle gear to arrest “scumbags” and “human cesspools”.
Duke Henry – a Vietnam veteran now living on the East Coast – keeps his opinions more to himself. He tells matter of fact stories about his regular overseas contracts – the high points and the boredom – just doing his job and surviving.
The book inadvertently raises some serious questions. What responsibility should our Government and military take for producing a constant supply of publicly-trained, highly specialised killers, free to sell these skills to any awful regimes or multi-national companies wanting their “services”? Should there be controls? And does New Zealand really want to follow the US into the paramilitary SWAT-type policing that we increasingly see in our police’s Special Tactics Group? The authors would probably answer “none of their business, no, of course”. The book suggests the opposite.