SBS: Special Boat Squadron

From this moment on, you and your men, you don't exist.

Formed in the darkest hours of the Second World War, as nation after nation fell before the unstoppable Axis advance, their task was to strike back at an enemy no army could meet in the field. Trained in sabotage and surveillance, they raided deep behind enemy lines, sewing chaos and capturing much-needed Intelligence: codes, documents, equipment – even personnel. Their methods were unorthodox, their success rate unprecedented. Soldiers, adventurers and rogues, they were the seaborne raiders who, by strength and guile, carried out the War's most daring covert operations.

Operation Anglo, 31 August 1942.

Beneath the waves, HMS Traveller closes in on the coast of Rhodes in the Eastern Mediterranean. Aboard, eight SBS commandos check their weapons and munitions as they prepare to infiltrate and sabotage two Axis bomber fields. That part of their mission will be a success... but only two of the eight commandos will make it back to the submarine. Twenty-four-year-old ex-Scots Guard Sgt Tom Bishop will be one of the lucky ones, but what he will face next will make Operation Anglo look like a cakewalk.

Praise for Iain Gale:

'A powerful novel of men at war. A triumph' Bernard Cornwell (on Four Days in June)

'Gale handles the military material superbly . . . Very exciting' Daily Telegraph (on the Jack Steele series)

'His brutal, bloody detail catches the chaos of battle . . . His prose is a sand-blown lens from the front-line' Daily Mail (on Alamein)

'He reveals the chaos, triumph and sadness of the desert war expertly showing every protagonists' point of view' Patrick Mercer (on Alamein)

'Knife-edge realism mingles with strategy, glory and tragedy in Gale's artistic narrative' Oxford Times (on Four Days in June)