Dragonfly: In death as in life, nothing is what it seems

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London: Soho:2015:
My name is James Michael Pearson. I’m forty-two years old and a former Lieutenant in the British Paratrooper regiment. I saw action in Bosnia, Kosovo, two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was there I came so close to being killed.
A Taliban sniper shot me in the chest out on operations, but I was saved by a quick thinking Sergeant Major who stemmed the wound and the swift arrival of a chinook that got me out of there and back to Camp Bastion. To this day every breath I take pains, I still feel the dust and grime of that wretched place. Thankfully the flashbacks are rare now, though they still strike when least expected. But I thank my blessings and I never moan because I’m still alive.
And there are many others I served with that don’t have such a luxury.
I left the army in 2004. After resigning my commission I took up my first love of writing. Something I’ve always had a real talent for. Many novels followed. I became the Daily Mail’s flavour of the month. Grown up boy’s own tales of this so called war on terror.
Made all the more glorious by changing names and incidents. Increasing the enemy death toll and upping the ante by making our lads even more heroic in print than in normal life. All to help increase book sales.
For I had a plan. I was going to be the next big thing. Andy McNab would not see me
coming. And he didn’t, I cleaned up.
But then something happened.
I was contacted by a former Paratrooper. Someone who told me the most extraordinary tale.
One which is now outlined in this book.
A story of two young soldiers who lost their lives, but before doing so experienced out in the midst of battle an incident so strange, it left senior officials in the British army seriously contemplating mystical forces were at work in that place, a cemetery for the greatest military powers the world has ever seen.
The English, Russians Americans, all have been handed our arses in Afghanistan and ultimately sent packing.
But there was something else out there in the killing fields. Not just The Taliban, but a neutral force possessing a power so profane, the reality of it left hardened soldiers on both sides, that thought they had witnessed all the horrors of war, as broken men.
For this thing gave peace in death and the chance to love a last time before the lights went out, and you travelled on.
I am talking about Dragonfly…….