This book's not half bad. The dedication gives a clue abut how it is to be read: 'Dedicated to my wife Maureen with the assurance that hardly any of this happened to me'. So by implication at least some of it did happen to the author and there's a teasing suggestion that more of the book than he wants his wife to know is based on direct personal experience. Its characters are a group of British National Servicemen stationed in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency. There's not much of a plot, but as a fictionalised memoir, or a detailed treatment for a film, it conveys graphically the long stretches of boredom and short bursts of terror of being young, conscripted into the army and a very long way from home. And when the sex scenes do arrive (as arrive they must), they are, well the word that comes to mind is sweet. When the main character, Briggs, admits to the prostitute Lucy that the sexual encounter they are embarking on will be his first, she is delighted to be dealing with a virgin soldier and treats him kindly, taking things very slowly. She shows him 'the big secret', and whispers, 'How the virgin like?' The chapter, and the description of the encounter ends: '"Oh, it's lovely, Lucy," he shivered. "It's lovely, really it is."'

A lot of the humour stays flat on the page, as in the episode where a number of the conscripts volunteer to be circumcised in the mistaken belief that the operation will get them ten days' extra leave, and it's not The Red Badge of Courage, but the harsh realities of the young soldiers' life are served up to the reader, made palatable by a comic mix of camaraderie, eccentricity and mild bawdry, but still starkly recognisable. ( )