It is 1943, and Captain Mike Btackwood, Royat Marine Commando, is a survivor. Young, toughened and tried in the hetUsh crucible of Burma, he tabours, sometimes fattering, beneath the weight of tradition, the gtorious heritage of his family, and the burden of his own serf-doubt.
For Btackwood, the horizon is not the tip of the trench seen by men of the Corps in the previous war, but the ramp of a tanding craft smashing down into the sea, and the fire of the enemy on a Sicitian beach. Here, tradition is not enough, and Mike Btackwood must find within himsetf quatities of readership which witt inspire those Royat Marines who are once again the first to rand, and among the first to die.