The classic memoir by an infantryman in the British army during the Second World War, “a book to bring a shiver to the most grizzled veteran (The Sunday Times).
In 1944, having distinguished itself in the North Africa campaign, Rifleman Bowlby’s battalion of Greenjackets was sent to Italy. But instead of being used in the specialized role for which it had been trained, most of the battalion’s vehicles were taken away on arrival, and the riflemen were told that they were to be used as ordinary infantry. Stripped of its hard core of regulars, the battalion suffered one disastrous defeat after another until its hard-won reputation fell in tatters.
This is a memoir that captures “quite extraordinary realism in this worm’s eye view . . . the sweating, slogging, frightened infantryman in conditions of extreme stress and horror” (The Sunday Times).