Marching to the Sound of Gunfire

In this work, scores of British soldiers from almost every echelon of the British Army tell their amazing stories of life - and death - at the sharp end.

In the 11 frenzied months of warfare that followed D-Day, these soldiers successfully drove the Nazi hordes back into their Fatherland, and beat them into surrender.

There are stories from the "poor bloody infantry" with their machine-gunners, mortar men, stretcher bearers and pioneers; the brave assault troops who stormed the Normandy beaches and forced bridgeheads over rivers and canals in four countries; the outgunned "tankies" in their Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills, slogging it out against the mighty German Tigers and Panthers, and the fearsome dug-in "eighty-eights"; the dashing recce types in their thin-skinned armoured cars and carriers, sending back vital radio reports; the sappers building bridges and clearing minefields under fire; the gunners with their dedicated FOOs bringing down fast, furious and accurate barrages; the signallers, patching up communication links; the non-combatant stretcher-bearers picking up the dead and dying from the battlefield, their Red Cross armbands no guarantee of immunity from fire.