EVER SINCE THE FIRST Gulf War it has been obvious that we need to find ways of discussing British intervention in Middle Eastern politics that don't place people immediately in a “for or against” camp. This thoughtful, gripping and engaging book by Chris Hunter might be the place to start.

Hunter joined the British Army in 1989, at the age of 16. Commissioned from Sandhurst, he qualified as a counter-terrorist bomb disposal operator and served with a number of specialist units in the world's most complicated troublespots — the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Afghanistan. In May, 2004, he was sent to Iraq.

Written against a dateline, much of which is familiar — the key engagements, the reported atrocities, political and media shenanigans, the consequences on the ground of Piers Morgan's decision to publish photographs of alleged abuse of prisoners — Hunter plunges the reader into the dead heart of life in a war zone.

All the key questions are asked: are the British forces liberators or invaders, are they representative of a moral obligation to never turn a blind eye, or symptomatic of an arrogant American global foreign policy? And all is set against the backdrop of soldiers' lives in the desert, the mountain passes and the compounds while politicians in Whitehall and Washington push pieces of paper from one metaphorical side of the Atlantic to the other.

Hunter wrote the book, rather than being assigned a ghost, which means that the emotion, the immediacy, the adrenaline rush of what it feels like to walk towards a device that may or may not blow at any minute, taking you and everyone in near proximity with it, packs an authentic punch. Hunter achieves the balance between information and action and, by keeping his anger in check, ratchets up the tension. He's reflective, sometimes painfully honest, but he does not allow hindsight to cast a dishonest shadow over the chronology or interpretation of events.

The book is dedicated to “the memory of those who made the long walk and never returned”. I would not have read it if it hadn't been a gift — the military jacket, quite reasonably designed to appeal to aficionados of Beharry, McNab, Ryan, will deter anyone who is not interested in the military genre. In addition, I was against our intervention in Iraq and do not believe that, for the most part, conflict is most enduringly resolved by the taking up of arms. Yet I found myself utterly drawn in by Hunter's clear and straightforward narrative. It is a book that made me think, reconsider, grieve for the pity of it.

If Hunter achieves two things it should be these — that, whatever our position on the moral rights or wrongs of the war, we should never lose sight of the people behind the statistics. And that, putting politics aside, we should listen to the quiet and decent voices of those who have witnessed such horrors. The best memoirs make us see the same old story with new eyes. Eight Lives Down, in its plain, unassuming and specific way, is such a memoir. It should be on every politician's Christmas holiday reading list.

Eight Live Down by Chris Hunter
Bantam, £17.99

Times Recommends

• 10 things you should avoid in hospital (unless there really is no option)
• Exclusive: Philip Pullman's essential reading list
• The White War by Mark Thompson