Two Days after Christmas 1944, during the harshest winter in living memory, 33 SAS troops parachuted into the valley of Rossano, Northern Italy. Carried out in broad daylight, the parachute drop was intended to deceive enemy forces into believing that a full parachute brigade had landed behind them. Drawing on post-op reports and memoirs, this book is a fictionalised account written from the perspective of one of the rank and file parachutists who took part in the operation, the author's father. Scrupulously researched and richly illustrated, Hann's personal narrative brings to life the co-ordinated attempts of the SAS and local partisans to engage and evade the enemy. For the first time, Hann provides a detailed account of some of the devastating setbacks and triumphs of SAS Operation Galia. One of the hardest fought and most successful operations of World War Two.
