ParaTripper
From Para to Pap
by Dr. Stuart Griffiths
Glory of War: Volume 2
ParaTripper chronicles the struggles of a former British paratrooper – wracked by PTSD following a tour of Northern Ireland – in his bid to become a photographer.
The British Army relies on soldiers like Stuart Griffiths. Born into poverty, into a broken home in a rundown Northern town, he was recruited into the forces as a 16-year-old ‘boy soldier.’ But he battled on into 3 Para, known as one of the toughest battalions in the army. ParaTripper exposes the grim underbelly of service life: cheerless, desolate barracks; bleak nights out in the NAAFI bar and cheap drugs to keep you going. Griffiths captures the time in the late 80s when ecstasy, LSD and cocaine began to infiltrate the ranks for the first time. But the real struggle is one of identity – Griffiths’ inner war to find his creative side in a harsh, unforgiving cult of violence.
ParaTripper is the second instalment of Griffiths’ Glory of War trilogy, and is the sequel to Pigs’ Disco.
Pigs’ Disco is Griffiths’ 2013 true account of his spartan induction into martial life at a time when Britain was changing, coinciding with the explosion of rave culture which offered fun and freedom to his generation. Pigs’ Disco is set to be re-released as a Yellow Press book.
In ParaTripper, Griffiths travels deeper and further than his debut book. Not least to far flung places; dealing with inner demons, isolation and avoiding addressing the elephant in the room – that of military institutionalised indoctrination. As he comes down from all of the toxic realities of life, and frees himself from the shackles of state, his self-questioning of late 20th & early 21st Century British society helps navigate the reader through corporate sleaze, and capitalist ideals of conformity.