Follow the real-life adventures of Bill Adlam, from escaping Dunkirk and conducting commando raids to storming the D-Day beaches.

Bill Adlam’s hair-raising escape from Dunkirk, his dramatic commando raids and his storming the D-Day beaches reads like fiction. But it all happened.

Bill escaped the Dunkirk disaster via a bayonet charge into Nazi machine guns. He was presented with the Military Medal ‘for gallantry under fire’ by King George VI. Later, Bill volunteered for commandos: he thrived on adrenaline.

Number 4 Commando took him to a surgical strike in the north of Norway. The stated objective: to destroy oil installations. It was a feint. Ian Fleming of the Secret Intelligence Service had masterminded the raid. Its objective: to help break the Enigma Code.

Number 4 Commando then sent him on a raid to Dieppe in August 1942 to spike naval guns to enable a landing by Canadian forces. Bill’s commanding officer was Lord Lovat: cousin to Ian Fleming and (allegedly) template for the fictional James Bond.

Bill’s prowess as a commando saw him headhunted to a top secret location in the wilds of Scotland. Here he trained others in the dark arts of ‘butcher and bolt’.

On the morning o 6 June 1944, D-Day, Bill passed over the sands of Normandy in minutes. The next two months saw him up against Hitler’s elite army and Waffen SS divisions.

The reader will ask the same question that Bill asked: how would he ever come out alive?

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Bill Goes to the Flicks
• Chapter 2 ‘This Country is at War with Germany’
• Chapter 3 Bill Wins his Military Medal
• Chapter 4 The Road to Ledringhem
• Chapter 5 The Road to Dunkirk
• Chapter 6 The Road to Buckingham Palace
• Chapter 7 With the Commandos at Weymouth
• Chapter 8 Of Cromwell and Cavalry
• Chapter 9 The Road to the Isles
• Chapter 10 Lofoten, Here We Come! Operation Claymore
• Chapter 11 Bill Sets Foot on Enemy Territory
• Chapter 12 Bill’s Raid is Reported to the Führer
• Chapter 13 What Adolf Hitler and Bill Adlam Did Not Know
• Chapter 14 Operation Pilgrim – Bill Goes to Africa
  • Chapter 15 Under Starters Orders
  • Chapter 16 Dieppe – Operation Cauldron
  • Chapter 17 Adolf Hitler’s View of the Dieppe Raid
• Chapter 18 Apotheosis and Beyond!
• Chapter 19 The Road to Achnacarry
• Chapter 20 The Dark Mile, the Death Slide and the Opposed Landing
• Chapter 21 The Achnacarry High Period
• Chapter 22 The Road to D-Day
• Chapter 23 Embarkation for D-Day
• Chapter 24 A Trip across the Channel – Operation Neptune
• Chapter 25 Adolf Hitler Responds to the Normandy Invasion
• Chapter 26 D Day: Bill Adlam Wades Ashore
• Chapter 27 The Road to Bayeux
• Chapter 28 Bayeux
• Chapter 29 The Road to Tilly – Operation Perch
• Chapter 30 The Road to Caen – Operations Bluecoat and Charnwood
• Chapter 31 The Road to La Mailleraye and Endgame
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Select Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Plates