| Synopsis: |
FROM hearth and home, they were called to the colours. As Britain faced the threat of Nazi invasion in the desperate summer of 1940, hundreds of thousands of men found themselves urgently being turned from civilians into soldiers. Among them was a motley crew of conscripts from Liverpool, Lancashire and Cheshire, who in July of that year were drafted into the newly-raised 7th Battalion of The Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire). Their military odyssey began inauspiciously at a hastily established training camp in Caernarvon, North Wales, where they had to drill with broom handles because there were no rifles and march in their own clothes because there were no uniforms. But, four years later, that same makeshift unit had been honed into a formidable fi ghting force - the 92nd (Loyals) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery. On D-Day in June 1944, its troops landed in Normandy with the special mission of protecting Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge, the vitally important canal and river crossings on which the success of the whole Overlord invasion hinged.It was a task they carried out with skill and courage, shooting down the first of up to 70 German planes and going on to serve with distinction throughout the rest of the campaign in North West Europe. In True Loyals, Tom McCarthy charts the remarkable five-and-a-half-year journey of 7th Loyals / 92nd LAA, in which his father served. Using war diaries, official archive material, memoirs, personal documents and extensive interviews with veterans, he tells an inspiring story of ordinary men in extraordinary times. Men who, when the call came, proved themselves equal to it. |