The sobriquet 'arms dealer' may sound sensational, perhaps in certain quarters even glamorous, but such descriptions, in my case anyway, would be so far from the truth as to be laughable. But for more than forty years living and working in South East Asia, I suppose, in the strictest sense of that label, that's what I was; an arms dealer; a dealer in defence equipment; a broker expediting at the behest of many of the foremost military equipment manufacturers in the western world a veritable smorgasbord of armaments, ordnance, communication systems, vehicles and helicopters to military and paramilitary elite forces throughout the region.

I state this  not out of any misplaced sense of aggrandisment, accomplishment or ego, far from it, but to simply acknowledge and emphasise the knowledge and personal experiences that have enabled me to render the reader tales that are ,hopefully, not only intriguing and enjoyable, but in terms of the equipment, time-lines, locations and the military and paramilitary units described,  accurate.

Much of the equipment decribed, I have personally been involved in trialling, supplying and supporting.  Similiarily the military  and paramilitary units portrayed, where I have made many friends and experienced first hand the challenges these elite units face in some of the most formidable environments on the planet.

Stories are only stories but having been involved, been there and seen it, maybe the lines between fiction and reality are more blurred than perhaps we believe.

TC 2023