Mulcahy Conway Associates

Point Man

Point Man is an unflinching and moving examination of the impact of warfare on soldiers and families. The story centres around young Kenny Meighan, his courage as 'point man' for his platoon, his experiences in Afghanistan and the challenges he faces on return to Britain. Entirely factual, the book is based on many hours of interviews by the author with the Meighan family and their friends. Mark Townsend, now home affairs editor for The Observer, met Kennywhile embedded with a frontline unit during ferocious fighting in southern Afghanistan.

Few point men survive long in Afghanistan. Kenny, an articulate blond-haired 20-year-old from Essex, was shot at on more than ninety documented occasions and became the longest-serving point man in Helmand province. From Kenny's platoon of thirty-two men only sixteen survived the tour, half falling victim to gunshot wounds, psychological trauma or chronic illness stemming from the brutal conditions. Nominated for a bravery award, Kenny decided to leave the army within months of returning from Afghanistan. He had fallen in love and sensed that what he had seen in Helmand had left him a changed, confused young man. He now works as a bus driver in Colchester. As an ex-serviceman his bosses placed him in charge of route 43, a circuit that cuts through the notorious Greenstead estate where he endures frequent abuse from its bored, angry young men.

The book offers a new appraisal of war as seen through the minds of a military family and a fresh perspective on the ongoing Afghanistan campaign. Fundamentally, it questions the attitudes of the state and the reader to war and presents a profound insight into the relationship between the hidden cost of conflict and wider society that has never been attempted before. Entirely factual, the book is based on hours of interviews with the Meighan family and their friends alongside the author's background of reporting the Afghan conflict for The Observer newspaper.

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