This book sets out to provide an account of an early special forces operation that involved parachuting commandos into southern Italy in 1941 and succeeds admirably in describing the difficulties encountered in establishing a viable air-inserted special forces team, complete with arms, equipment and explosives, behind enemy lines. It highlights the many false starts and the lack of preparedness of the Commando teams at this early stage of the war and the way in which the lessons learned were used to ensure that the Airborne Forces deployed later in the war were better prepared for the difficulties likely to be encountered. However, many readers will share the author’s - and this reader’s - disappointment that a number of key lessons had still not been addressed by the time the Rhine crossing was attempted at Arnhem in 1944, particularly in respect of reconnaissance and deployment of troops as close to the objective as possible.
The writing is well-paced and skilfully weaves together a range of first person accounts to convey a coherent account of the recruitment, training and deployment of the troops, including their subsequent successful completion of their mission. The narrative continues with the troops’ attempts to make their way to the coast to where they believed a submarine would be waiting on prearranged nights. The decision by the planners to cancel this rendezvous fortunately did not add to the problems experienced by the Commandos as they were all caught as they made their way to the coast. The account is all the better for the lack of any chauvinistic flavour to the writing and for the factual, rather than any ‘gung ho’, sentiment.
For this reader, the later section of the book that deals with the ‘what happened next’ to the Commandos after capture and imprisonment was a little lengthy and occasionally repetitive. However, this did not detract from the overall high quality of the book, which served as a reminder of the incredible heroism of the many young, and not so young, men who volunteered for exceptionally hazardous duty.