The Easy Day Was Yesterday

The Extreme Life of an SAS Soldier

De: Paul Jordan

Narrado por: Neil Pigot

From his cage in a putrid, overcrowded Indian jail, Paul Jordan reflects on a life lived on the edge and curses the miscalculation that robbed him of his freedom.

His childhood, marred by the loss of his father and brother, produces a young man hell-bent on being the best of the best - an ambition he achieves by being selected to join the elite SAS. He survives the gut-wrenching training regime, deployment to the jungles of Asia and the horrors of genocide in Rwanda before leaving the army to embark on a career as a security adviser.

His new life sees him pursuing criminals and gun-toting bandits in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, protecting CNN newsmen as the US 7th Cavalry storms into Baghdad with the outbreak of the Iraq War and facing death on a massive scale as he accompanies reporters into the devastated Indonesian town of Banda Ache, flattened by the Boxing Day tsunami.

During his 24 days in an Indian gaol, Paul Jordan discovers that friendship and human dignity somehow survive the filth and deprivation.

The Easy Day Was Yesterday is fast paced, brutally honest, raw and laced with dark humour. The core of Paul Jordan's eventful life, it shows the ability of the human spirit to survive even in the direst adversity.

©2013 Paul Jordan (P)2017 Audible, Ltd

Engaging Book - Misleading Title

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

This is a good yarn. It is essentially a autobiography or memoir of an interesting Australian guy. It really has minimal “SAS” content, but that may be a factor of the time frame of his service and that this is about the Australian SAS.

The author relates genuine and personal stories of his life and various jobs. The literary style overall is simplistic and overuses some metaphors “squadron of mosquitoes” is repeated too many times.

Sometimes the detail is tedious and ignores the Chekhov's gun principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. This alone can derail the storytelling in this memoir.

I found the training portion very interesting as it mirrors the selection procedure at Hereford. As a former infantry NCO, the contrast of the Australian mountain training and the British Army’s infamous “fan dance” in the Brecon Beacons was engaging. This grueling 24KM race up Pen y Fan and the other peaks is part of the SAS and Senior NCO courses, Brecon.

Overall it’s a solid tale, but it is not a book about the SAS.

Would you recommend The Easy Day Was Yesterday to your friends? Why or why not?

No, skip it.

Which character – as performed by Neil Pigot – was your favorite?

Neil Pigot was very dry, I imagine this was based on the material.

Did The Easy Day Was Yesterday inspire you to do anything?

Only to tell stories about the Brecon course in Wales.

Any additional comments?

A bit of a slog, but stick with it.