'First Man In'

Author: Ant Middleton 

Publisher: Harper Collins / 2018

Pages: 307

This is, at the same time, both an autobiography and a book of instructions for living.

The autobiography first. The author was born in 1980 in Portsmouth but on the last day of 1995 his father died rather suddenly and his mother promptly had a boyfriend and became rich.

The family moved to a big house in France and the boy was given a posh education.

But when they moved back to Britain he could not cope with a far more raw environment.

One day he was beaten up by another boy. His stepfather, on being told, instead of commiserating, told him that next time he must beat his tormentor or not come home at all. This the boy did and he was suspended from school; but the first lesson had been learnt.

Next he joined the army as a recruit. Here the environment was worse. The training was gruelling but the young inexperienced recruits were almost egged to compete with each other to extremes. 

Here, during Basic Training, he learned a very important lesson: he was doing everything right but he was getting everything wrong - he must learn to work with others, instead of working to beat all the others.

He also learned that he must not let others define who he is. He must always have a plan which he must keep dynamic. And he must understand that fear of taking action is fear of the unknown.

Once Basic Training was over he joined an elite group, the 9 Parachute Squadron at Aldershot. 

Here at first he couldn't get anything right, it seemed. But he did not give up. On the contrary, he redoubled his efforts. He learned to make his enemy of the moment his energy. And that a lesson, any lesson, is a lesson. And that every day is giving you a lesson, if you learn to take it. And that there's always a route around your weakness.

Then the time came for deployment. First it was the Maze in Northern Ireland at the time of the Troubles and then Macedonia in the Balkans where his knowledge of French drew him to the Foreign Legion and he came to realise the British were basically bullies, getting drunk at every occasion and making nuisance of themselves. Those were also the days when his first marriage fell apart.

Through his mistakes he learned that a real leader must stand apart from the crowd, though at first he would be trying to be accepted.

Crowds are egotistical, built around the myth they're the best. A leader must know not to believe it.

A real leader must be humble enough to be open to inspiration.

After Macedonia and the end of his marriage, life made him realise he needed a thorough recharge. This came about through a real coincidence: one day, on the way back from exercises, he noticed they were passing through a place called Wood Green, where his dead father's family lived. His mother, for her own reasons, had kept him and his brother out of touch with his father's family. 

But now he became obsessed with everything to do with his father. He managed to get out of his grandmother the address of his father's family, drove there and met his father's remaining family who accepted him back.

He still had not shaken off all his demons. He was arrested for drink-driving and then a second time. One day, out of the blue, his grandmother offered to take him to his father's grave. 

That very night he beat up a complete stranger who passed an innocuous remark. The police were looking for him. He bought two litres of whisky and spent the night weeping and sleeping on his father's grave. 

He planned to escape to Australia but one day he was introduced to a local beauty, Emilie, and the two instantly hit it off. She told him to give himself up to the police. Obviously, he baulked and in reply told her he had been thinking of joining the Royal Marines. His court case turned out in his favour.

The Marines, when he joined, turned out to be completely different from the Army and made him realize how much he had not been taught.

Soon he and Emilie got married and he was posted to Afghanistan. It was there he first killed a man. It was there that he made friends with his inner demons including acknowledging his mistakes. He learnt to accept that sometimes one has to go round the long way and accept that most of us have horror stories they can tell about their childhoods. And that sometimes help comes from the most unlikely sources.

A long description of the posting in Afghanistan follows. He learned that one doesn't have to be a leader to lead. And also that one should not be too quick to write someone off. And that one has to do what has to be done even if people judge you for it.

He did two stints in Afghanistan as part of the elite group SAS and came through. 

But once back in Britain karma struck. One evening he met his mates in a Chelmsford pub and they were enjoying themselves when a fight broke out outside and he tried his best to defuse it, called taxis and sent his mates home. There was only a woman left, one of the three who had started the fight. And she started attacking him. 

Still he resisted but a local policeman decided to butt in and this was when he lost it.

At the end he was sentenced to prison. Emilie stood by him and lied to his children that he was with the army. Money problems mounted and he had to take a huge amount of stick from people he could easily beat up but that would mean a longer term in jail.

He was even approached to go criminal once out of jail and join one of a number of criminal syndicates doing debt collection and other criminal jobs, but he refused.

At the end he was employed in a risky job of getting a girl out of Jordan where she was being kept illegally by her father.

More lessons learnt: you can't trust your body. Situations can change in an instant. If it feels like "temptation" it's a bad decision. Don't knock police officers out. 

And more: Waiting is a weapon. Shame hurts. And wins are rarely clean.