Misadventures with Coco-Oscar: A Conscript's Role in the Malayan Emergency (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781764086479)

How did a British teenager find himself involved in an undeclared and little-known war on the other side of the world? He accepted an offer he couldn't refuse: donating two years of his life defending the Queen's dominions, in his case, Malaya. It was called National Service. Based on his 1959 'Demob Diary' and the 62 letters he wrote home over 16 months, Misadventures with Coco-Oscar portrays life in a dysfunctional infantry battalion on active service seen through the irreverent eyes of a reluctant conscript. The battalion in which the author served was commanded by 'Coco-Oscar', a decorated veteran of World War II. The 'Malayan Emergency' was his first experience of commanding a battalion on active service, by which time his youthful bravery had been overtaken by his need to impress the senior ranks above him. Unfortunately for him, the battalion he led found itself in the wrong places at the wrong times to demonstrate any combat capability and he found himself having to account for a succession of cock-ups and cover-ups. During its brief period on active operations, the only casualties the battalion suffered were self-inflicted; the only hostile bodies it captured were sexually transmitted; and the only fighting it engaged in took place in bars and dancehalls. The battalion's only success was on the football field where it won the Far East Army Football Cup. Serving under the command of a leader oblivious to the needs of the serving soldier, this wry and comedic account tells how a bolshie conscript survived a life-threatening experience and lived to tell the tale of the incompetence, atrocious food and mindless military discipline that is army life.