‘Whiting… is a skilled and prolific writer…’ – The Spectator

Russia, 1941.

The 69th Infantry Regiment wear the King’s Cross for the blood they shed during the invasion of Poland.

But the Sixty-Ninth, under the command of Major von Dietz, are entirely unprepared for the horrors that await them in Russia.

Hitler is determined that his German troops will succeed where Napoleon’s failed, and so the Sixty-Ninth begins a long and deadly march on Moscow.

The trek takes them across Russia’s snowbound steppe; starving, freezing, and plagued with desertion, the regiment struggles to pull together to fight Cossacks, wolves, and Stalin’s suicidal ski-troops.

But the horrors of the march into Russia slip away compared to what awaits Red Rudi, Private Maltitz and the rest of the regiment once they begin their retreat.

Three thousand men made their way into the barbed-wire snowdrifts of the Russian Front; tested to the breaking point and beyond, only a few return…

‘Whiting… is a skilled and prolific writer. His comments on the generals are apt… An important book that records one of the most difficult yet least publicised phases of the war’ -* Spectator *

‘Whiting is a very experienced popular military historian who gets the last ounce of drama from the bloody battles in the West between September 1944 and February 1945’ - * The Times *

b> Charles Whiting (1926-2007) was one of Britain’s most prolific military writers, with over 300 books to his credit. He saw active service in the Second World War, serving in an armoured reconnaissance regiment attached to both the US and British armies. His books therefore possess the insight and authority of someone who, as a combat soldier, actually experienced the horrors of the Second World War. He authored some