Death of a Soldier: A Mother's Story

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

On 12 May 2009 Margaret Evison's son Lieutenant Mark Evison of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, died of wounds sustained whilst leading a patrol in Helmand Province. Hailed a hero, Mark's death was a national sacrifice, his grave to be one of many in the identical, ordered rows in a military cemetery. But to his mother Margaret it was the most intimate of griefs. In Death of a Soldier, she attempts to reconcile her own unanswerable sense of loss with the idea that her son died for a good cause.

Reviews

'A book that everyone should read - A Mother's Story is a book that needed to be written' Australian Times 'Moving and inspiring - Courageous and hugely impressive' The Psychologist 'A truly gripping - and exceptionally well-written - story of incredible bravery, tragedy, bungling, dishonesty, and magnanimity.' Royal College of Practitioners 'Margaret Evison's love, grief and dignified rage shine from the book but they do not detract from the presentation of facts. Or from the notable absence of some key facts. And Mark's inquest was not an assault on the military. In fact, it was the inquest's surprisingly banal conclusions that drove Mrs Evison to write the book.' Dermot Rooney, BAR Margaret Evison writes affectingly and elegantly about the swirl of emotions and memories she felt as she saw her son go off to war and first received the news that he had been shot, as well as the limbo of uncertainty and anxiety that followed, and the human drama in Selly Oak Hospital as the family had to let go and Mark's life-support machines were switched off... The fact that Margaret Evison could write this very accessible account, and that she was also able to find a way to visit Afghanistan to see for herself the country in which her son died, marks her out as a rare individual. Nick Childs, Rusi Journal There is a range to this book that is alone distinguishing. Margaret Evison, the mother, delivers the intimate close up of the devastating loss of her son. Evison the clinical psychologist also manages to stand back and offer a more professional perspective on the struggle with grief and reconciliation. As well, a gifted writer intervenes to make sense of a story as remote and imposing as the Hindu Kush. Chris Masters, Australia DLR