SURROGATE FATHERS
“Bleeding on my Father’s carpet was the least of my worries, getting into the British army was my biggest concern. I had decided that the only way out of the violence from my home-life was to enrol as a Junior Soldier as soon as I was sixteen. But it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, because the Army had grossly underestimated the number of wannabe artillery soldiers for that year and had to whittle down 900 to just 200. The way they did this was brutal, cruel and dangerous.
This tale blows the lid off the life of a junior soldier in the British Army during the 1970’s. It is a harrowing emotional journey that rises from the ashes of despair to prove that the human spirit can transcend bullying and abuse and find humour and reconciliation in even the darkest hours.
The Seventies were the end of an era and though we finally may have got colour on our tellies, morally things were still very black and white. It was a time when ‘men were men’, except sometimes they weren’t, they were just boys, just abused, bullied and tormented boys living in a hell not of their making and trying desperately to find a way out. And this is the story of one such boy...
This book is Sean Connolly’s second autobiographical novel. Sean enrolled in the British Army as a ‘boy-soldier’. He served as a Bombardier in Belize, Canada and Germany amongst others and has written about all the wonderful and happy times he had and yet while Surrogate Fathers is not without its moments of humour it describes his darker early days in the Army and the excesses of NCO’s and Officers who made adversity a way of life for so many young soldiers of that time.
(N.B. - This eBook was originally published as two seperate eBooks: ‘Not My Father’s Apprentice’ & ‘Surrogate Fathers’ - both volumes are now combined in this one eBook edition to match the paperback edition of Surrogate Fathers).
“Bleeding on my Father’s carpet was the least of my worries, getting into the British army was my biggest concern. I had decided that the only way out of the violence from my home-life was to enrol as a Junior Soldier as soon as I was sixteen. But it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, because the Army had grossly underestimated the number of wannabe artillery soldiers for that year and had to whittle down 900 to just 200. The way they did this was brutal, cruel and dangerous.
This tale blows the lid off the life of a junior soldier in the British Army during the 1970’s. It is a harrowing emotional journey that rises from the ashes of despair to prove that the human spirit can transcend bullying and abuse and find humour and reconciliation in even the darkest hours.
The Seventies were the end of an era and though we finally may have got colour on our tellies, morally things were still very black and white. It was a time when ‘men were men’, except sometimes they weren’t, they were just boys, just abused, bullied and tormented boys living in a hell not of their making and trying desperately to find a way out. And this is the story of one such boy...
This book is Sean Connolly’s second autobiographical novel. Sean enrolled in the British Army as a ‘boy-soldier’. He served as a Bombardier in Belize, Canada and Germany amongst others and has written about all the wonderful and happy times he had and yet while Surrogate Fathers is not without its moments of humour it describes his darker early days in the Army and the excesses of NCO’s and Officers who made adversity a way of life for so many young soldiers of that time.
(N.B. - This eBook was originally published as two seperate eBooks: ‘Not My Father’s Apprentice’ & ‘Surrogate Fathers’ - both volumes are now combined in this one eBook edition to match the paperback edition of Surrogate Fathers).
