THE BEACHHEAD COMMANDOS - HAMPSHIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA

1983 first edition hardcover with dust jacket and 208 pages in good condition. R50 postage in SA. Three bookshop stamps in book. -Spearheading the British assault waves in every Allied invasion landing during the Second World War were parties of khaki-clad naval officers and ratings, whose principal tasks were to secure the beachhead in the teeth of enemy defensive fire and direct and control the arrival of successive waves of landing craft bringing ashore the main body of the fighting troops and their equipment. Above the famous Combined Operations badge on the shoulders of their battledress they wore a special flash which bore the words 'RN Commando', a distinction for which they were fully qualified.Not only were they required to control the invasion beaches and, until the landings were assured, remain on them for days on end with little rest or food and under enemy bombing and shelling, their only protection a slit trench, they were also expected to undertake a variety of roles unrelated to that for which they had been specially trained. Their work was considered by Force Commanders to be 'the most important and dangerous in any landing'.--------------------------------------Royal Navy Commandos took part in combined operations in Madagascar, at Dieppe, in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, northern Italy and the Adriatic, the steaming, disease-ridden chaungs on the Arakan coast of Burma, and finally in Normandy itself and beyond up to the time of the collapse of the Third Reich.Few know even that Royal Naval Commandos existed, so that this is their previously untold story.