Marching to the Sound of Gunfire: North West Europe, 1944-5

In 'Marching to the Sound of Gunfire' scores of soldiers from almost every echelon of the British Army tell their amazing stories of life - and death - at the sharp end. In the eleven 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 armored 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 furious and accurate barrages; the signalers, 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; the RAMC doctors and orderlies tending the wounded in their RAP under the most terrible conditions; the immediate support services of the RASC, bringing up vital food and ammunition for the morrow; and the REME repairing armored vehicles to fight another day.