Battery from Hellfire

The regiment consisted of men who had newly enlisted - men who came from ordinary backgrounds, with little military training.

Just four or five months ago, they were defending London with little to do but fire against hostile aircraft.

Now, joined up with the Eighth Army, the horrors of the war and the hot, dry desert conditions have become a reality.

Held up at the pass, they are right in the path of Rommel who is battering his way through a reeling Allied army. The mobile ack-ack column needs to get through the pass to safety ...

But it is too late, the Germans attack ... destroying their batteries ruthlessly.

Under the command of Major Hislip, a calm, fatherly-like man, the survivors battle against the harsh desert conditions.

With limited water, their only hope is to reach their own troops. Lost in the desert, with no idea of which direction to head, their only hope of survival is to trawl out the only matador remaining from the wadi.

With the matador free, the men feel a sense of achievement and possibility ... until Major Hislip insists the gun must come with them ... the gun that he cannot leave behind. No matter what.

With tempers flaring and further attacks by the Germans, the gun continues its journey with the men ... tired, hungry, hurt ... can the men reach safety the safety of their own troops?

Do they have to take the gun with them?

"It has everything, knowledge of the desert and of mechanised war, supremely good characterisation, descriptive brilliance, and a'special idea) masterly in its simplicity - a major's insistence, at the risk of mutiny, on saving a mobile gun." Birmingham Post

Gordon Holmes Landsborough (1913 - 1983) was an English publisher, author and bookseller. He worked with various publishers and even set up his own publishing business at the forfront on change in the paperback publishing and bookselling industry. Other works by him include Benghazi Breakout (1966), Long Run to Tobruk (1975), The Dead Commando (1976) and many more.


Genre: Thriller