Publishing house avoids hassle of military lawsuit by allowing the Defence Force to edit a soldier’s book

A Danish soldier’s book about the war in Afghanistan will be released on Monday, but only after being edited by the military.

Several passages of the book Soldat i Afghanistan – en hverdag ved frontlinjen’ (Soldier in Afghanistan – a normal day on the front line) comes on the heels of a failed attempt by the Defence Force to stop the publication of a book, which contained details about secret military operations in Afghanistan.

Both the author of the new book, corporal Michael Kattrup, and publishing house Fokus admitted they allowed the military’s edits because of fallout from the release in September of Thomas Rathsack’s ‘Jæger – i krig med eliten’ (Hunter – at war with the elite).

‘The Hunter book case has had a big influence on our book,’ said Sten Svensson, editor in chief at Fokus.

‘We wanted to be 100 percent certain there wouldn’t be any problems with the content. I didn’t want to compromise our soldiers’ security or have my author get slapped with a lawsuit.’

But the decision to allow the military to edit the book has got many in the literature and journalism fields to criticise the move.

‘If the content is not illegal and is simply embarrassing for the military, then we have a huge editorial problem because publishing houses lose their freedom of the press,’ said Lotte Garbers, president of the Danish Writers’ Association.

Kattrup himself said he was definitely influenced by the ‘Hunter’ book case.

‘I’m going after a military career, so I wanted everything to be on the up and up.’