Roy Urqharts escape from Arnhem Major-General Roy Urquhart was a magnificent soldier
- ferocious in battle & yet always protective of his men. He had just one weakness. Flying made him sick. He was therefore a truly odd choice to be put in command of the 1st Airborne division
- the Paras. When he led the doomed British attack on Arnhem he found himself overwhelmed outnumbered & trapped. How he & his driver made it back across the River Rhine escaping shells & German patrols is one of the great epics of personal bravery. Breakout through Hells Gate He was the outstanding Russian General who had captured a huge German army at Stalingrad
- & he was hungry for more. Marshal Georgiy Zhukov was brilliant ruthless & loved killing Germans. & it looked like he had done it again. 60 000 German soldiers were trapped their backs against the River Dnieper as three million Russians moved in. But this time Zhukov was up against a very unusual kind of Nazi. Leon Degrelle wasnt German at all. He was Belgian
- a failed politician who in his devotion to the Fuhrer had become a grunt soldier in an SS regiment. Together with a motley mixture of Finns Estonians & fellow Belgians
- he would hold off the might of Zhukovs army enabling 56 000 men to escape. Morshead holds Tobruk Leslie Morshead is Australias greatest general. Known as Ming the Merciless to his troops for eight weeks he & his Aussie troops held off the might of German General Erwin Rommels Afrika Korps at the key port of Tobruk. Surrounded by Germans Morshead decided that the best form of defence was attack. For eight weeks his men repelled the Germans one soldier even bayoneting to death an entire German patrol. The films features the extraordinary recollections of Sergeant Ray Ellis who manned a howitzer throughout the siege. Moores March How desperate does have a man to be to suck the blood out of his own arm? Thats just one of the astonishing pieces of personal testimony given by Alex Winchester a Scottish soldier who survived walking over 200 miles through the Libyan desert. Moores March occurred when a patrol of the Long Range Desert Group was caught behind enemy lines. Trooper Ronald Moore a tough New Zelander then led three men including Winchester back to safety through 50 degree heat with almost no water or supplies. On the way they entered Special Forces legend. Operation Pedestal Featuring never seen before footage of the actual events this film tells the story of how Dudley Mason a quiet sea captain from Surbiton won the George Cross for his role in the relief of Malta. In one of the most remarkable voyages in history he was part of a convoy that fought its way through five solid days of massed German attacks by air & sea from Gibraltar all the way to Malta. His ship The Ohio was appallingly damaged but Mason managed to bring it into harbour in Malta floating with the assistance of two destroyers & unload its precious cargo of oil. The ship sank immediately afterwards
- on camera. Evacuation in the Baltic It was the biggest evacuation of World War Two
- three times bigger than Dunkirk. Over 2 million civilian & soldiers soldiers were spirited away from under the noses of the Red Army & the Royal Navy in an extraordinary German operation. It lasted for over four months finishing on the very last day of the war. This film contains the deeply moving memories of Horst Woit who was then just ten years old & who survived the worst maritime disaster in history when the ship taking him to Germany was torpedoed.