The men of D Company - half from the original Ox and Bucks, half from volunteers drawn from every branch of the army -came from all over the United Kingdom, and from every class and occupation. What they had in common was that they were young, fit, eager to be trained, ready for excitement. They were the kind of troops every company commander wishes he could have.

Howard's platoon leaders also came from different backgrounds. Two were Cambridge students when they volunteered, and one was a graduate of the University of Bristol. But the oldest lieutenant, at age twenty-six, was Den Brotheridge, who, like Howard, had come up from the ranks. Indeed, Howard had originally recommended Den, then a corporal at the Regimental Depot, for OCTU. His fellow platoon leaders were a bit uneasy about Den when he first joined up; as one of them explained, 'He wasn't one of us, you know'. Den played football rather than rugby. But, the officer immediately added, 'You couldn't help but like him'. Den was a first-class athlete, good enough that it was freely predicted he would become a professional football player after the war.

Captain Brian Friday was Howard's second-in-command. Six feet tall, a quiet steady type, Friday was ideal for the job. He and Howard hit it off, helped by the fact that Friday's father had also been in the Oxford Police force. Friday himself had been in the motor car trade. He was in his mid-twenties. Lieutenants Tod Sweeney and Tony Hooper were in their early twenties; Lieutenant David Wood was all of nineteen years old, fresh out of OCTU. 'My gracious', Howard thought to himself when Wood reported, 'he is going to be a bit too young for the toughies in my company'. But, Howard added, 'David was so keen and bubbling with enthusiasm I thought, "well, we've got to make something of him". So I gave him a young soldier platoon with mature NCOs.'

Sweeney describes himself and his fellow subalterns as 'irresponsible young men. Life was very light-hearted, there was a war on, lots of fun for us. John was a dedicated and serious trainer and we were rather like young puppies he was trying to train.'

Brotheridge provided enthusiasm and humour for the group. He would gather the platoon leaders together, then read to them from Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. They could scarcely get through a sentence without breaking down in peals of laughter. Weekend evenings they would drop into the lobby of the local hotel, where a good number of'dear old ladies from London, who wanted to escape the bombing, had taken up residence for the duration'. Den and his cohorts would sit properly enough, but then Den would start whispering orders. The grandfather clock was the objective - David was to sneak behind the sofa, climb over the bar, go through the kitchen, and attack the clock from the rear; Tod should leap out the window, dash around to the door, end charge in to attack from the side -and so on. Then Den would shout, 'Go', and the ladies watched aghast as these young men dashed about.

Howard was pleased with his company, officers and men. He especially liked having so many Londoners in it. The regiment moved to Bulford, where D Company was given a spider block, near the barracks but separate from it. So, Howard notes, 'right from the first there was an atmosphere of D Company being on its own'. He set out to make it into both a family and a first-class combat unit.

In North Africa, Hans von Luck was fighting in the only war he ever enjoyed. As commander of the armed reconnaissance battalion on Rommel's extreme right (southern) flank, he enjoyed a certain independence, and so did his British opposite number. The two commanding officers agreed to fight a civilised war. Every day at 5 p.m. the war shut down, the British to brew up their tea, the Germans their coffee. At about 5:15, von Luck and the British commander would communicate over the radio. 'Well', von Luck might say, 'we captured so-and-so today, and he's fine, and he sends his love to his mother, tell her not to worry'. Once von Luck learned that the British had received a month's supply of cigarettes. He offered to trade a captured officer for one million cigarettes. The British countered with an offer of 600,000. Done, said von Luck. But the British prisoner was outraged. He said the ransom was insufficient. He insisted he was worth the million and refused to be exchanged.

One evening, an excited corporal reported that he had just stolen a British truck, jammed with tinned meat and other delicacies. Von Luck looked at his watch - it was past 6 p.m. -and told the corporal he would have to take it back, as he had captured it after 5. The corporal protested that this was war and anyway the troops were already gathering in the goods from the truck. Von Luck called Rommel, his mentor in military academy. He said he was suspicious of British moves further south and thought he ought to go out on a two-day reconnaissance. Could another battalion take his place for that time? Rommel agreed. The new battalion arrived in the morning.

That night, at 5:30 p.m., just as von Luck had anticipated, the British stole two supply trucks.

Heinrich Hickman, meanwhile, had gone through the campaigns in Holland, Belgium and France of 1940 as a gunner on an 88mm gun. In 1941, he volunteered for the parachute regiment, and went to Spandau for jump school. In May, 1942, he was in the middle of his training.

In Warsaw, Vern Bonck was doing his best to stay out of the German conscription net by working with extra efficiency at his lathe. Helmut Romer, fourteen years old, was finishing his school year in Berlin.

At the bridge over the Caen canal, there were as yet no elaborate defences, and only a tiny garrison. Still, the garrison was large enough to make the lives of the people ofBenouville, Le Port, and Ranville miserable. The Germans helped themselves to the best of everything, paid for what they did purchase with nearly worthless printing-press francs, took all the young men away for slave labour, made travel even within the country almost impossible, imposed a curfew, and shot dissenters. By May, 1942, the Gondrees had decided to do something about it. Georges joined the local Resistance, which advised him to stay put and use his situation to gather information on the bridges and their defence. This he could easily do on the basis of what his wife heard in the cafe. Let there be no mistake about this action - the Gondrees knew that if the Germans caught them, they would be first tortured, then hanged. But they persisted.

In May, 1942, Jim Wallwork was also in training camp. Jim was a Manchester lad who had volunteered for the army at age 19, in 1939. His father, who had been an artilleryman in the Great War, had advised him, 'Whatever you do, Jim, don't for God's sake join the infantry. Get in the artillery, the biggest gun you can find; if possible, the railway gun.' Naturally, Jim ended up in the infantry, bored to tears, although he did make it to sergeant. He tried to transfer out, into the Royal Air Force, but his commanding officer blocked the move because he wanted to keep Wallwork with him.

Then in early 1942, when a call went out for volunteers for the Glider Pilots Regiment, Jim signed up. By spring he was training at Tilshead, Salisbury Plain. 'It was rather rough', he recalled, 'because I was doing my own equipment, polishing my own brass, going on those God-awful run-marches, and drills, and all sorts of that nonsense.' What he most feared, what every man in the Glider Pilots Regiment most feared, were the letters, 'RTU'. They stood for Return to Unit, and they meant disgrace, failure. Jim managed to stick it, and by May, 1942, he was at flight training school, learning to fly a small aeroplane.