Here are excerpts from a remarkable book about World War II: Striking Back: A Jewish Commando's War Against the Nazis by Peter Masters. The book is published by Presidio and distributed intemationally through Greenhill. Advance reviews in the United States are very encouraging: "an exciting saga that begs to be translated to film ... will have readers - and, one hopes, audiences - cheering." - Publishers Weekly "An admirable war memoir." - Kirkus Review Striking Back is great adventure reading and film rights to this story of the refugee Jewish Commando's war have been placed with Miramax (The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, etc) for the producer/director team of Rick and John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction, etc). Excerpts from Striking Back "We staggered up the beach. With one hand I carried my tommy gun, finger on the trigger; with the other I held onto the rope rail down the plank. I also canted my bicycle. Knee deep, I waded ashore. Others had their ramps shot away, so they jumped, paddled, and swam. David landing with 45 Royal Marine Commando, told me later that he was hit in the face by body parts of a sailor who had been hit by a shell. Laddy and Webster never made it ashore. Both were killed before they even landed. For Mac who had been wounded in Sicily but said that he wanted to participate in D day "if it's the last thing I do." D day was the last thing he did. An enemy mortar felled him on the beach as he landed with No. 4 Commando. I was told he said, "Someone help me remove the brick from under my pack," and then he died. We had been told to get offthe beach as quickly as possible, so we moved up toward a lime dune. In passing, I saw the Skipper, who had landed next to us on the right with brigade headquarters. I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I saluted him. It must have been the only salute on the beach on D day. I remember the charged atmosphere, the noise, the smell of things buming, and a few scenes in great detail. Some of the infantry that had preceded us were digging in behind some knocked-out, smoldering tanks. I even saw two men trying to dig in in the shallow water on the beach. Their sergeant yanked them out of their water-filled holes, yelling, "Get off the beach!" Being a greenhorn, I did not know enough to be really frightened. The noise of the whistling shells didn't mean a thing to me. I had no idea whether they were coming or going; just as well I suppose. In a never-to-be-forgotten tragedy, I saw a wounded or dying man trying to rouse himself as in slow motion, from where he had fallen, on a slight rise above the sandy beach. As we walked across the dunes just where the white sand ended, we passed a soldier sweeping for mines with a mine detector, an oval plate with a long handle and earphones. But we could not wait for him. We had been told to get off the beach and our leader, Captain Robinson, went right past him. The mine sweeper yelled: "Hey, what are you doing?" and was told, "Sorry about that, mate, we've got to go on." "I saw the German the instant he stood up. Instinctively, I went down on one knee as I pressed my trigger. He missed. I missed. My gun fired one shot - and jammed. He ducked for cover. I went through the prescribed "immediate action" to clear my jammed weapon and then cocked it. He reappeared and missed with another burst. I took aim, but there was only a click as I pressed the trigger. By this time I was lying flat in one inch of grass, trying to present the smallest possible target. The next immediate action we had been trained to do was to remove the magazine, clear the gun by pressing the trigger again, replace the magazine, cock the gun, and then continue to fire. This meant taking my eyes off my adversary, or from the spot where he kept reappearing. It flashed through my mind that he was poorly trained, that he should have changed positions. I found it almost impossible to look away. The compulsion to look at one's nemesis is overwhelming. At the same time I said to myself that he can't keep missing me. So I wrenched my eyes down to look at my tommy gun, and I saw that there were two or three rounds of ammunition hanging crumpled up in the breech. I ripped them out, replaced the magazine, cocked the gun, flipped up and set the sights. I had to shoot him before he finally succeeded in shooting me." "The chateau a couple of hundred yards behind us was the first to be hit when the shelling began. It burst into flames; apparently, it had served as an ammunition dump for the enemy. When the artillery shell struck what must have been stacked crates of ammunition, it set off not only a blaze that lit up the mellow, hedge-hemmed countryside, but also spectacular and actually rather beautiful fireworks. Minor explosions alternated with dash lines of luminous orange tracer bullets streaming off into the blue darkness of the night. Whether the Germans destroyed the chateau deliberately or whether they did so ranging for our position, I don't know; but it became obvious that they had heard of the loss of their fortified strongpoint and that they were doing their damnedest to dislodge us with a massive barrage of medium artillery, to be inevitably followed by a night or dawn infantry counterattack. Luckily, the screaming shells sailed over our heads to explode in a field right behind us. Then there was silence, eerie quiet. The Germans must have concluded that they had not yet softened us up suffciently, because the ground assault that surely had to follow did not follow. In the meantime our radio operator continued to try to call up our headquarters to ask what had happened to the units on either side of us that were supposed to contact us and strengthen our front. No answer. We were supposed to hold Varaville until further orders. But the radio batteries were running low. '' "How on earth were we going to be able to withstand the enemy's absolutely certain onslaught? Then the mortars opened up on us. They sounded like wood being chopped somewhere in the night. The rounds sailed down in high, sizzling arcs, landing close by and exploding with ear-shattering bangs. The first we knew of the beginning of the German infantry attack was when that position came under machine-gun fire from the east. We retaliated, probably too quickly, with bursts of machine-gun fire and more prolonged fire from the captured old Maxims. As soon as the enemy gunners saw where our fire was coming from, they responded with witheringly accurate bursts of machine-gun fire. Four of our men were hit instantly. Captain Robinson now gave the order to Bombardier Richardson to let loose with our captured antitank gun. Counterbattery fire by the enemy's mortars followed immediately. They knew precisely where their 3.7-inch Pak was; it must have been clearly marked on their maps. They hardly needed to range to find their target, but range they did, rapidly. There was one explosion just beyond the gun, then one in the tiny space between it and us in the command post. A third explosion was a direct hit. A cloud of dust hung over the spot where it and Bombardier Richardson and his mate had been. The enemy had grown bolder. Closing in from all sides, they had begun to toss their stick and egg grenades over the walls and inflicted several casualties. The natural desire among those within was to seek cover. There was no telling where the next hand grenade from an invisible enemy was going to come over the wall. But Stewart's logical mind assessed the situation accurately. If they could throw grenades in, the Commandos could throw them out. If they were close enough to clear the wall with their grenades, then they are close enough to be hit by any thrown by the Commandos, especially because there was even less cover outside than there was inside. Rather than trying to organize a grenade-throwing posse, which would have taken precious time and explanations, the two friends moved swiftly around the various places under and behind which the men had taken shelter and collected from them as many grenades as they could carry. Then they pulled out their pins and lobbed them over the walls, concentrating on the areas from which most had been coming in. There was a notable lull outside following the thuds of the grenades exploding. " Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 80 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com