The book opens in the late 1980s, when the teenage Holt entered the conflict in Angola as part of South Africa’s compulsory two-year military conscription for white males. Holt describes the carnage and fear that he and his fellow servicemen frequently experienced. The author also discusses his struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the war’s aftermath.

Holt’s reflections on his life before and after Angola are interspersed with extracts from a diary he kept during his serviceman days. Some of his prose is clichéd. For instance, Holt writes about encountering ‘the dark side of man’, and declares that he has ‘pulled no punches’ when describing his time in Angola. These clichés reduce the dramatic im-pact of the events he is describing. That said, though, Holt does provide a useful overview of the emotional and psycho-logical turmoil experienced by those involved in armed conflict. He vividly describes the ‘ten lifetimes’ worth of traumatic stress’ that he had ‘bottled up’ during the Angolan War, as well as his subsequent efforts to deal with this stress. Holt informs his readers that writing the book has been ‘very therapeutic’, though he does not suggest that it has enabled him to ‘put [his] ghosts to rest’.

At Thy Call is recommended for those researching the human costs of war. Holt delivers a comprehensive and sym-pathetic account of the ‘extreme conditions’ that he lived under during his time in Angola and also his battle with PTSD.