Bad Medicine
Terry Ledgard
Terry Ledgard joined the Australian Army because he thought it would be pretty awesome, and chicks liked guys in a uniform. While being a chick magnet seemed to be the major thing on his mind, his career as an acting medic during the war in Afghanistan is fascinating reading.
As long as you can get past the extreme amounts of explicit swearing in the prologue and first chapter, you’ll be golden for reading this novel. If that sort of thing bothers you, I advise skipping straight ahead. I put the book down and tried to take a nap instead of keeping reading at that point. Anyway, I persevered and it got better from there.
Ledgard has come through war and PTSD and emerged the other side an excellent writer. There were sections where I thought it was a little unclear or stilted, but overall the writing was great. It felt like you were within those war scenes. Something I found interesting was that he never (or at least I don’t remember) talked about ‘the War on Terror’. It was simply us against them.
I’m going to give this four stars, by pretending I didn’t read the beginning of the novel. It’s not the usual style of things I would read, but it was really enjoyable, if rather confronting.
Penguin Random House | July 2016 | $35.00 | Paperback
I loved this book. It shows that Diggers never change. I was in the Army in the 1960’s and 70’s and can see the modern Digger is no different those of us from the past. I rate this book as 4.5 out of 5. Can we have some more books from you please Mr Ledgard!?
Fantastic! Glad to hear you also enjoyed it.