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A SOLDIER has made a mockery of new military rules that prevent serving members of the armed forces selling their stories by writing a book that will give a first-hand account of one of the most vicious battles that Britain has faced in Iraq.

Dan Mills, a sniper, was one of 100 members of 1st Battalion, the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment caught in a bloody siege by the Mahdi Army, which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) tried to conceal. His book, Sniper One, which has sold 11,000 advance copies before it is even published, is tipped to earn a six-figure sum in royalties.

The MoD and army officers spent months trying to stop the book being published before finally agreeing last week. Ultimately, the ministry would have had to go to court to prevent publication and lawyers believe the new rules would have been judged legally unenforceable.

The rules were introduced earlier this month in the wake of the row over the MoD decision to let two sailors, Faye Turney and Arthur Batchelor, sell to the media their account of the naval boarding party captured in the Gulf by the Iranians in March.

There is now a blanket ban on service personnel selling accounts of their experiences. Even if unpaid, they may not publicly say or write anything about defence without permission.

Mills will receive no immediate payment but his publisher, Michael Joseph, will pay the money into an account where it will wait until he leaves the army in two years’ time.

Sniper One tells the story of one of the most ferocious battles of a seven-month deployment to Maysan province by his battalion, beginning in April 2004.

That period signalled an end to Britain’s relatively peaceful first year in southern Iraq with a huge uprising centred on the provincial capital of Amarah.

The battalion was in continuous fighting for four months and one company of more than 100 men suffered 36% casualties.

As the situation spiralled out of control, the MoD told press officers to play down the situation. With Tony Blair being heavily criticised over Iraq, the ministry insisted that it was relatively calm “across the province” on the basis that other towns except Amarah were quiet.

However, Amarah was in open revolt. Private Johnson Beharry would win his Victoria Cross in the fighting there in the first “Mahdi uprising” in May.

Two other members of the battalion won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, second only to the VC, and six were awarded the Military Cross.

By August, the Mahdi Army was determined to drive the British out of Amarah. Mills’s company was based at Cimic House, a former governor’s residence on the banks of the Tigris. The building was an isolated outpost in a dangerous city, with the rest of the battalion in an old barracks 20 miles to the south.

On August 5 the second “Mahdi uprising” began with a massed attack on Cimic House. For 23 days, just 105 men and one woman - Private Debbie Kaye, a cook - from 1st Battalion, the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, were under continuous fire from 500 militia. There were 85 attacks on the base, firing more than 600 mortars and rockets.

Mills, who was mentioned in dispatches for his role, had the job of picking off militia leaders. He covered soldiers on night attacks against the Mahdi Army.

The garrison fired back more than 33,000 rounds, killing an estimated 200 militiamen. They lost just one of their own, Private Chris Rayment, 22, from London, who was killed accidentally when a road barrier hit his head. Six men were seriously wounded and six vehicles were destroyed. Supplies were taken in by convoys of Challenger 2 tanks but for 10 days, between August 15 and 25, the situation was so bad that even they could not get through.

The company commander, Major Justin Featherstone, who won an MC, was told he could pull out at any time but he and his men insisted on staying. “It was our turf, it was our home,” he said later. “We had never left it and we just decided we were not going to be pushed out of it.”

Mills cannot speak to The Sunday Times, but an army friend said: “The only reason Dan has written the book is because the MoD tried to cover up what was going on.”

The MoD admitted that publication was not authorised until last Tuesday but said this was simply because it was August and everyone was away: “We delayed authorisation until the new rules were in place. We never set out to ban the book.”

The long war over military memoirs

Dan Mills’s clash with the MoD is the latest Whitehall controversy over military memoirs.

- In 1993 Andy McNab, a former SAS soldier, published Bravo Two Zero, his account of a mission in the 1991 Gulf war, with MoD approval. But they forced him to make changes to a follow-up book in 1995.

- General Sir Peter de la Billière, Britain’s commander in the 1991 Gulf war, was excluded in 1997 from SAS premises after publishing an authorised account of the war.

- In 1998, Nigel Wylde, a retired officer, was accused of leaking information about surveillance operations in Northern Ireland for a book. Charges against him and the author, Tony Geraghty, were later dropped.

- Last April, Faye Turney and Arthur Batchelor were allowed to sell their account of the naval boarding party captured by the Iranians in the Gulf. In the row that followed, servicemen were banned from selling their stories while in the forces.

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