Book Review of 'Tornado Down'.

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Alex Fox 10-3                22nd May 2002

Book Review of ‘Tornado Down’

        

This was a true story about two RAF flight lieutenants who were shot down by a SAM Missile, while flying a combat sortie in January of 1991, in Operation Desert Storm, during the Gulf War conflict. The story was about the two flight lieutenants in the RAF, one, John Peters being the pilot and the other, John Nichol the navigator. The story followed them on their journey from ‘Merry old England’ to their base at Germany and finally into the harsh and unforgiving environment of the Iraqi Desert. The book follows the officers, John Peters and John Nichol on their dangerous journey into war. The book tells of the pair’s horrendous ordeal within many prisons and airbases. It tells of how the two overcame severe beatings and threats, as well as mental and psychological abuse.

The amount of time the book covers is about five months, from October 1990 to the February of 1991. The beginning of the story was initially quite slow to build up, it covered a couple of months within the first few chapters, but the main events that unfold during the story take up many more chapters. For example, when the officers are captured behind enemy lines, their ordeal, which is what the story was based upon, is described in horrific and graphic detail, this is to implant images into the readers’ head and put them at the scene.

What happened in the story wasn’t so much unusual as disturbing and extraordinary. What the Iraqi ‘Soldiers’, if you can call them that, did to Peters and Nichol was way out of line and not in accordance with the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention guidelines as to treatment of prisoners of war. The events entailed within the story are what every combat pilot dreads, capture. Not only does it mean that the enemy did catch them but it also means probable torture or death, interrogation that the pilots dread is also on the cards. Peters and Nichol, both feel bad about they way they crumbled under interrogation. They both felt like they had let the side down, even though the things they told the Iraqi’s weren’t top secret. Especially Peters felt this way, he was desperate to win the mental and psychological fight even if he couldn’t win the physical fight, because he was tied up and blindfolded, but by giving in to the beatings to stop them, he felt he had lost. This happened to all the pilots who were captured in Iraq. No one could blame them for giving away the information, after all they were beaten so badly all they wanted them to do was stop, but they did put up with the so-called ‘punishment’, for a very long time.

The opening couple of chapters in the book weren’t exciting as such. The opening chapters were setting the scene, telling the reader who the characters were. It begins by illustrating how the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait was building up, and the tensions within XV Squadron were building up, being told ‘Yes you’re going to war…’ then the next day being told ‘No you’re not…’ it also tells how the pilots and navigators felt about going to war, about death and torture, little did they know at that point how their worst fears were to come true.

All of the events in the story fit together nicely. Each event in the story follows on nicely from the previous event. For example, after the pilots finish their training in Germany and Britain, they are given their orders and they are being flown out to Bahrain. There has been nothing left out in the story, no significant events are left out, this gives the reader a much clearer picture of what went on before, during and after the war. It is a detailed account of what actually happened.

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The climax of the story was when the POW’s were told that they were to be freed and that their horrendous ordeal was over. Because the reader has been engrossed in the story, they now feel that they are there, well I did anyway! And as such the reader feels the POW’s joy and jubilation as well. The story ended when the families had been reunited at RAF Laarbruch in Germany, and the story concludes at the funeral for all of the fallen squadron member’s. It ends with some poignant words by John Peters read from the ‘Lesson of Thanksgiving’, ...

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