July 1943. With North Africa secured, the Allies launch an invasion of Sicily, and the 2nd Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers are in the van of the assault on the Italian Beaches.
Now B Company Commander, Tanner’s promotion has brought him fresh trouble. Not only has his Company been given the hardest stretch of the beach to attack, there is a new Battalion Commander who has decided to make his life as difficult as possible.
In the bitter fighting that follows, Tanner witnesses a new kind of fighting in which the rule books are seemingly thrown away and in which the biggest enemy appears to be on his own side rather than the Axis troops barring their way.
As Tanner battles his way across the sun-scorched islands, he is confronted by the new realities of war in which the Sicilian mafia are supposedly fighting on the side of the Allies but making the lives of ordinary Italians a misery.
Forced to question the cause for which he has fought so long, Tanner and his trusted sidekick, Sykes, find themselves embroiled in a fight that has become personal – and a fight in which they have to use all their resolve, skill and experience if they are to have any chance of survival…
