BITING THROUGH

A testimony to the brutal realities of one of the longest wars in modern history.

Once belonging to a group of highly trained soldiers, John Ratcliffe left the Australian military to pursue a career in Melbourne, practising alternative medicine. Years later, he was called to Afghanistan for a short assignment as a security contractor. He planned to be back in Australia after a few weeks. Five years later, he finally returned home.

BITING THROUGH is the story of what happened in those five years, during one man's descent into the behind-the-headlines reality of the war in Afghanistan. Thrust into a world of terrible danger, Ratcliffe encountered human traffickers, drugs lords, and corrupt officials while the international community looked on and went about its business. He tried to find a way to make a difference to those whose lives he touched, all the while negotiating minefields of dishonesty, only to be betrayed at the final hurdle and incarcerated in a medieval Afghan hellhole, awaiting the death penalty.

John Ratcliffe was born in Melbourne in 1962. He studied traditional Chinese medicine before spending six years in the Australian army's commando regiment. He then left to continue his career in Chinese medicine and run a clinic for 11 years. He left Melbourne for Afghanistan in 2005 on a three-week private-security assignment that morphed into a five-year journey into hell. After returning from Afghanistan in 2010 he tried to return to a normal life, but found it difficult to hold down a regular job. In 2013, he left Australia once again to apply his operational experience and medical knowledge in third-world countries.