The letter read: “I, Count Ernst Von Steiger, the Red Arrow challenge the leader of this squadron to a personal duel at noon tomorrow. I shall be waiting at 16,000 feet at British Map Ref. 481609.” And just before noon a lone Spitfire took off. At the controls was young Mike Carson, the pilot they […]
One man held the key to the operation called by the codeword – “TORCH” – the huge Allied invasion of North Africa. His name was Pete Macrory, a Canadian in the Royal Engineers – and nobody trusted him an inch. To find out why, and what made Pete tick in his own peculiar way, you […]
The Italians fighting in North Africa clashed not only with their British foes, but also with their German allies. Enzo Lanzini certainly wasn’t happy facing the advance of British armour across the desert, but he certainly was no coward either. It was just that he had seen the way the Nazis operated, and he had […]
Thundering across the desert wilderness came the savage band of Tuaregs-veiled warrior horsemen. Suddenly their mounts faltered, shied and pulled up, to stand trembling. Amazed, the Tuaregs cocked their rifles and looked around for signs of an enemy. Nothing! Then, from beyond a high ridge ahead came again the strange, unearthly sound that had frightened […]
TWO old tanks – two knocked-out Italian tanks whose guns still worked, and were trained on the prison camp fence – these and some vicious strands of barbed wire were what stood between a crowd of desperate British prisoners and freedom. Captain Al Kelly and Lieutenant Pete Smith reckoned there was a fighting chance of […]
Captain Jimmy Ramsey and his maverick Special Raiding Force were used to doing their own thing – dangerous hit-and-run raids deep behind enemy lines. So, during the battle of El Alamein in autumn 1942, when the Raiders were teamed with a Long Range Desert Group unit to capture an isolated German airfield, tensions mounted between […]
In 1939, confident young Pilot Officer Duncan Marlow fell foul of an obnoxious C.O. and was posted out of the way to Griffin Island – a small garrison off Africa’s West Coast. Discipline was lax and the Governor was untrustworthy. He was on friendly terms with the Germans who were stationed nearby, even though War […]
Cairo – Egypt’s capital city and British General Headquarters in the Middle East, nerve centre of the Allied campaign in North Africa. A city filled with soldiers, sailors, airmen…but also a city teeming with spies and agents, men who would stop at nothing to get the information they needed…then send back to their own headquarters […]
Massive doors set in a cliff face. Enemy submarines slinking in at night to their hidden lair…and slinking out again before dawn to go about their deadly business. This base could not be bombed or shelled, but it had to be destroyed. And the man to do it was a soldier sent home from the […]
They were a motley bunch – two Scotsmen, one Englishman, one Welshman, one Irishman and an Australian. Led by the unconventional Captain James Ramsey, they were known as the Special Raiding Force, and their job was to operate behind enemy lines in North Africa. They wrote their own rules, and their specially armed jeeps packed […]
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