Book review: Main Battle Tank by Niall Edworthy

Tanks have been a weapon of war since 1916.

Their development and introduction onto the battlefield by Britain during World War One arose from the need for an armoured machine which could move powerfully on all kinds of terrain and break through enemy trench defences.

Almost a century on, this formidable military vehicle is still playing a crucial part in many conflicts.

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The Challenger 2 is the advanced main battle tank currently used by the British Army in combat situations and was built by BAE Systems which has several bases in Lancashire.

It entered service with the British Army in June 1998 and the last of the 386 tanks was delivered in April 2002. Challenger 2 has seen operational service in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

Main Tank Battle is the dramatic true story of three squadrons of Challenger 2s from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in southern Iraq in 2003.

Author Niall Edworthy spent hundreds of hours interviewing officers and men from the cavalry regiment which forms the main armoured force for the 7th Armoured Brigade, the famous Desert Rats.

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And the result is a well-written,factual thriller recounting what has been described as the biggest tank engagement fought by the British since World War Two.

It conveys in brutal detail the harsh conditions under which the Scots DGs lived and fought out a war which was to test them and the Challenger 2 main tank battle to the limit.

“What no-one in the SCOTS DG knew as they climbed into their sleeping bags and got their heads down was that one of those bright yellow flashes on the horizon, a few miles to their north, had just destroyed a Challenger tank, killing two of the crew outright and seriously injuring two others standing nearby.”

And the fact that the war was being fought right in the midst of the civilians the British troops and their allies were trying to protect also hit home.

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“One minute the soldiers were talking to groups of grinning children at the side of the road, the next they were scrambling for cover and exchanging fire with a mobile mortar unit.”

That was the strange and deadly reality facing a British tank regiment at war.

(Penguin, hardback, £25)