Why this is the most brutally realistic war film ever made, writes RICHARD PENDLEBURY, who’s reported on conflicts around the world for 25 years – and says the story of a unit under fire in Iraq has haunting lessons for Ukraine today [Video]

My first experience of being under direct fire happened while I was lying in an alpine meadow near Batusha, Kosovo, on a glorious spring morning in 1999.

I’d taken cover next to an Albanian guerilla, as a furious, fully-automatic gun battle between his comrades and the Yugoslav Army erupted in the beech-wooded ridge above us.

That debut bullet passed between our noses, which were no more than two feet apart. He’d just turned his face towards mine to tell me about his girlfriend in Canada.

The round fizzed – I’ll never forget the noise – rather than cracked, by us, because it had already travelled far enough to have slowed to below the speed of sound. But not too slow to kill. I was as much amazed as afraid.

‘Would you like to swap places?’ the fighter asked me, because he was a polite fellow and I was slightly closer than …