A large number of submissions were made in response to a call for poems for inclusion. The panel was made up of the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy; the presenter of Radio 4's Poetry Please, Simon Rae; General Sir Richard Dannatt and the editor himself, Captain John Jeffries, formerly of the Coldstream Guards. The poems come from a variety of writers, Army, Air Force and Navy, as well as from wives, mothers and children. The time in uniform of those service and ex-servicemen varies from World War 2 to the present day including submissions from those currently in Afghanistan. The wars covered in this book are mainly Iraq and Afghanistan, however there is a sizable portion reflecting on Northern Ireland, with a few from Bosnia, Falklands and the Second World War.



In 2010, with the full support of the MOD, John Jeffcock, poet and a former soldier in the Coldstream Guards, invited contributions for a book of modern war poems. He was overwhelmed by the response: contributions came from serving soldiers, veterans and their families - wives, sisters, daughters (one just 11 years old). The writers have one thing in common: these are people whose lives have been changed by war, and the poems speak to readers with direct, emotional appeal. While over half of the contributions relate to Afghanistan, there are also poems inspired by the Second World War, The Falklands and Northern Ireland. This is also the first time that poems have been gathered from all ranks and all organizations - from the Parachute Regiment to the Special Air Service, from the Gordon Highlanders to the Royal Marines. As the poetry of Brooke, Owen and Sassoon spoke to those who endured the First World War, here are poems that speak of war in our time - the theatres of war might change but the emotional resonance remains the same.
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