Matt Rix is my way of taking you, the reader, into battle.

Let me tell you now that close combat is exciting, your senses are on overdrive and your awareness is amplified, you can do the seemingly impossible. The relief that flushes over you when those first rounds start cracking overhead is something you have to experience to believe, it’s euphoric and once you’ve tasted it you want more, so much more.

Let me tell you now that combat is terrifying; the fog of war can overtake your senses and make you ineffective, rifle shots and machine guns, screams and explosions all make up the stimulus flooding in to the mind. The adrenalin alone can cripple the fittest man and make you gasp for breath, the easiest tasks become totally unachievable and once you’ve experienced it you never want to again.

Matt Rix has experienced both of these dimensions of combat. He is a flawed person. At times he is a great leader and at other times he is ineffective. He isn’t real though, nor is his platoon or any of the other characters save for the obvious historical figures. What are real are the descriptions of the landscapes and the descriptions of combat. I have tried to capture the frictions of war that I personally experienced and describe the stress that it puts on leaders and their soldiers.

Finally, much is said and implied in the book of the relationship between The 2nd Commando Regiment and The Special Air Service Regiment. This relationship can occasionally be strained. When two units espouse their mottos “Without Warning” and “Who Dares Wins” this is going to happen. It’s important, however, to note that both units are full of exemplary Australians, people who have devoted their whole lives to the defence of Australia and put themselves deliberately in harms way again and again to ensure mission success, at home and abroad. Some of these men have given everything. On behalf of all Australian’s, and to both these units, thank you.

To you the reader, I hope that you enjoy Matt Rix’s deployment as much as I did.

Bram Connolly, DSM