When your two earliest memories are of your older brother being thrown against a wall by a drug-crazed lunatic and the slaying of your pet dog, it’s not a good start. When you’ve been shot at, rocketed, bombed, charged by elephants, had a parachute malfunction, and been chased by a six-foot-eleven wrestling legend, there’s bound to be some psychological issues. Unable to defend his mother as a young boy, Steve Brown dreamed of the day he’d be big and strong enough to protect his family. After a disappointing adolescence where he was expelled from school and became involved in drugs and crime, he was shown leniency by a Juvenile Court Judge when he mentioned an aspiration to become a soldier. Refocusing himself, he joined the famous Parachute Regiment of the British Army and successfully completed the arduous six-month training course to become a paratrooper, learning along the way what it really meant to be tough, through harsh personal experience. Steve spent the next twenty-seven years serving in the Parachute Regiment and Pathfinders, travelling the world, meeting people, listening to their stories, and creating his own. Completing operational tours in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Macedonia, Afghanistan, and Iraq he has experienced situations that most people only ever read about. Thankful to have survived where some good friends have perished, he has got by with good luck, dark humour, preparedness and the help of friends and family. After seeking help for his mental health Steve underwent almost five years of psychotherapy, which helped him immeasurably, but also dragged up incidents and feelings from his past that were buried deep in his subconscious. You’d Be Nuts Too is a mixture of stories that include sadness, badness and madness that will hopefully make you laugh, cry, gasp and shake your head in disbelief.
I throughly enjoyed reading this book it was both funny and very moving of a Para life story from his childhood in the 1970's right until he left in 2010's But a great book to read.