Gary Weight

@garyweight.bsky.social

182 Followers 215 Following

Author - currently writing SOE and The French Resistance: Normandy 1940-44. Author of #MettleAndPasture (WW2 History of 2nd Lincolns) & #OperationFrankton (The Cockleshell Heroes). Owner of www.pegasusbattlefieldtours.com

Gary Weight SOE and French Resistance Talks
Gary Weight SOE: Special Operations Executive book Out Now
My Grandfather sitting on his fire truck at White Waltham Airfield 1941
World Holocaust Day Exhibition at Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon Essex
Caltrops or Tyrebursters used for sabotage during World War Two Pegasus Battlefield Tours
OPERATION FRANKTON is the operational name of the famous ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ raid during WWII, carried out by ten Royal Marines that paddled the length of the Gironde Estuary in tiny canoes to place explosive limpet mines on German merchant ships harboured in the French port of Bordeaux. Although the raid was partially successful, only two of the ten men would survive to tell the story; Major Blondie Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks. We proceeded in the direction of the roar. As we got nearer I could see the white foaming surf; against a black sky it looked awesome. The tide was carrying us along at a fair old pace, so before I had time to worry any more we were in swirling waters and being thrown around like a cork. I dug deep, using every ounce of strength conscious of the need to keep the canoe balanced and struck ahead. - Marine Bill Sparks.
Author Gary Weight at the BBC talking about his book Mettle and Pasture.
Mettle and Pasture - the story of the part played during the Second World War in Europe by the 2nd Battalion The Lincolnshire Regiment. Entering France in September 1939 as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) they witnessed from the front line the blistering attack on Belgium at Louvain and first hand the German Blitzkrieg beginning on 10 May 1940. Fighting a fierce rearguard action as part of the British 3rd Infantry Division under command of General Montgomery, the Battalion covered the frenzied withdrawal of the British Army through the carnage of Dunkirk arriving back to the shores of England with less than 25% of their original force. On 6 June 1944, almost four years to the day after the demoralizing evacuation at Dunkirk the Battalion landed on the coast of Normandy on D-Day. Told in their own words, eyewitness accounts and memoirs are expertly weaved together with official diaries to recall the experiences of the infantrymen at the front - from the days in France and Belgium in 1939 to the assault on Normandy, spear-heading such a great invasion, to resisting and attacking the enemy at Caen and blunting the formidable Panzer counter-attacks in the dangerous Bocage. From ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, come the bitter battles in Belgium and Holland, the attrition of holding the Maas River during the coldest winter in living memory, and finally on into Germany fighting the SS around Bremen just hours before hostilities ended on the 8 May 1945. Vivid accounts tell tales of courage, fear and individual sacrifice and how soldiers faced up to the enemy under fire, sharing danger and surviving the savage conditions but also of the pride and honour of belonging to such a famous and historic regiment - The Lincolnshire Regiment. With an abundance of previously unpublished photographs and clear, concise maps of the battlefields, this is the story of the war the way it really was for an infantryman - told by the men who were there.
SOE and the French Resistance in Normandy 1940-44 by Gary Weight