When Major Adam Jowett walked out into no man’s land to stand face to face with the Taliban fighters who had killed three of his men, hoping to agree a truce, he knew any small misjudgement could result in him being killed or taken hostage.
“In my whole time in Afghanistan,” he says, “it felt like the stupidest thing I’d ever done.”
Fortunately he was able to bring to an end the Siege of Musa Qala, where Jowett’s platoon of 88 men had been tasked with defending the town centre amid the carnage of the war in Helmand Province.
For 56 days in the summer of 2006, he and his Easy Company unit of Parachute troops and Royal Irish Rangers, had held off the insurgents in an operation likened to the British Army’s against-all-odds defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, portrayed in the film Zulu.
When an uneasy truce was agreed, it resulted in the bizarre situation of the UK soldiers mixing with their enemy for a month before they could finally leave.
I've just finished listening to the Audible version of Major Adam Jowett's book: No Way Out: The Searing True Story of Men Under Siege. I read many military books, fiction & non fiction. This incredible story tells the true tale of Major Adam & his troops, & their ferocious battle against the Taliban in Musa Qala (Helmand Province, Afghanistan). Highly recommended.
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