Not my rip

Coward On The Beach [book 1]
Now, as a rule, there isn't much talking goes on in an LCA[Landing Craft Assault] before a landing. It's not exactly that you're struck dumb with terror - that comes later.

More that your senses are so overwhelmed by the immensity of what's going on around you that you can't quite bring yourself to accept it's really happening.

"This is it," you tell yourself, examining the crib sheet kindly provided by General Eisenhower: "The hour is upon you. The Great Crusade has begun."

But no matter how hard you try, there'll always be a part of your brain that insists there's been some terrible mistake. Perhaps this is just another rehearsal - a bit more realistic than the earlier ones, that's all. Perhaps you\'re about to wake up and find it has all been a frightful dream.

Of course, there's another part of your brain that does accept what's happening.

That's the part that makes you gaze wistfully over the stern of the LCA, watching the wake narrowing to the diminishing speck that was your mother ship, wishing that you could claw back the time. Knowing all the while that the only way to get out of this mess is by moving forward, not away from the danger but closer towards it.

Before it's better, the rational part of your brain is telling you, it's going to get a lot, lot worse.

Every few minutes or so, you\'re jerked from your stunned reverie of vacillating hope and fear by the sight of the shoreline - each time looking more distinct and ominous than before.

At first, it's just a distant grey blur, sporadically illuminated by so many flashes of bursting, rumbling flame that you almost feel sorry for whoever's having to endure such a weight of firepower.

And perhaps, as you begin to be able to make out the greenness of the individual fields and the tall white Norman houses - those few the Germans haven't destroyed to clear their field of fire - you permit yourself yet another sliver of optimism.

"Well, this isn't so bad. It all looks pretty peaceful. Maybe our bombardments have done their job. Maybe our deception plans did the trick. Maybe the opposition was lighter than we'd feared."

It\'s at just this point - about 2,000 yards off shore, I'd say - that the German guns properly open up and blow your every false hope to high heaven.

You can actually feel it - the tension spreading through the ranks like tautening rope - you can smell the fear and loosening bowels as the tracers arc overhead like murderous fireflies, and the shells splashing either side of the craft send up plumes of water, and the first stray shots and shards of shrapnel begin to ping off the armour plating on the side of the craft.

We want to be ashore. God, how we want to get off this bloody boat. But from what I can see of our landing beach, in the bobbing rectangle of view above the heavy, iron-bound bow ramp, we're in for a pretty rough reception when we do. If we do.

The beach, Jig Green, is apparently deserted save for two bottle-green Centaurs crawling forward under the most intolerable fire, the stubby 75mm guns on their angular turrets questing with painful slowness for the German positions which could wipe them out at any moment.

This was the beach that was supposed to have been cleared two hours ago.

Now one of the tanks has lost a track; another's brewing up, and even from this distance, with the wind whipping in your ears and the shriek of the shellfire, you can still hear the screams of the burning figure lurching from the hatch and flaming across the beach until he's silenced by a jigger of bullets from a hidden casemate.

At this rate, we\'ll be damn lucky if any of us gets further than the water\'s edge.


Coward At The Bridge [book 2]

After all he's been through, he ought to be garlanded with gongs and in command of a battalion at the very least by now. Dunkirk; Crete; the Western Desert; Stalingrad; Burma; D-Day: you name it, and Dick Coward fought in it often surviving only by the skin of his teeth, invariably thanks to the wise advice of his wise old platoon sergeant Tom Price.

So why aren't his courage and decency better appreciated? It's a question Dick himself often asks. And the answer matters, too, because of the deal his terrifying and cantankerous father ΓΓé¼ΓÇ£ General Ajax Coward VC has made with his two surviving sons: whichever boy has the "best" war will inherit the family's magnificent Herefordshire estate.

Up until now Dick\'s wicked twin brother James has made all the running, having attained higher rank and won more medals. But the mission Dick\'s about to embark on next could change everything. It's called Operation Market Garden and if everything goes according to plan, Dick will not only win the estate but also the heart of the gorgeous Lady Gina Herbert. All he has to do is find some way of earning himself the Victoria Cross. Which shouldn't be too difficult with a man of Sgt Price's considerable ingenuity advising him.

There's only one problem. This Operation Market Garden: it looks like it's going to be such a pushover there may not be any actual fighting to do. 30,000 men, the cream of Britain's and Americans airborne forces, dropping out of the sky on top of ill-prepared, half- strength German units comprising mostly old men and young boys.

What could possibly go wrong with an operation like that?