The Books
Africa 1941 – Released December 2016
In Book 9 of the Raiding Forces Series U.S. Lieutenant Colonel John Randal returns in Africa 1941. Lieutenant Colonel Randal has established a clandestine base at Oasis X on the far side of the Great Sand Sea from which to launch hit and run gun jeep raids on isolated enemy positions, airfields and fuel tank farms up to a thousand miles behind the lines with Desert Patrol while his Sea Squadron carry out amphibious pinprick Commando raids off a Landing Craft Tank along the Mediterranean Coastline. Raiding Forces is also tasked with raiding the Italian roadhouses located every fifteen miles along the only blacktopped road Rommel has in Africa, which runs from Tripoli to Tobruk, the Via Balbia. Lieutenant Commander Ian Flemming, RN recruits Raiding Forces to conduct ‘pinch operations’ targeted against remote Africa Korps weather stations to capture code books, keys and signals devices that can be used by MI6 to penetrate the Ultra Secret German Enigma machines. In addition he has to spring Colonel Dudley Clarke from a Spanish prison and rescue his men being held in two Italian POW camps.
BUY NOW:
Paperback and Kindle
Private Army
IN THIS SEQUEL TO DESERT PATROL LT. COL. JOHN RANDAL RETURNS IN PRIVATE ARMY Raiding Forces is undergoing a major reorganization to be better able to carry out small scale raids against Rommel’s only hard topped road, the Via Balbia. It runs along the coast from Tripoli to Tobruk. The plan is for Raiding Forces to be able to strike from the desert out of the Great Sand Sea with gun jeeps and from the Mediterranean using amphibious DUKW’s. While this is taking place, the unit is alerted for the invasion of Persia. US Army personnel who have resigned from the army in order to volunteer for the Middle East contingent of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) arrive and are integrated into the unit.
BUY NOW:
Paperback and Kindle
Desert Patrol
The siege of the RAF base at Habbaniya is lifted after the defenders launch a surprise counter attach followed up by an intense air campaign and assault on Bagdad by Habforce that force marched to their aid. Back in Cairo, Raiding Forces is ordered to interdict the Via Balbia, Rommel’s 1500 mile supply route along the Mediterranean coast. Maj. Randal forms Raiding Forces Desert Squadron (RFDS) and Raiding Forces Sea Squadron (RFSS) to conduct gunjeep and amphibious pinprick raids against the Afrika Korps exposed line of communication.
BUY NOW:
Paperback and Kindle
Necessary Force
Maj. John Randal is back in Book VI in the Raiding Forces Series. He travels to the RAF Base located at Habbaniya sixty miles south of Bagdad to see Lt. Pamala Plum-Martin be awarded her pilots wings from the flying school located there. RAF Habbaniya is a base that the war has passed by, senior officers at the end of their career are assigned as well as pilots who are not considered good enough for combat flying or pilots who have become combat fatigued from flying combat tours and need a rest. Maj. Randal, the MI-6 senior officer Jim ‘Baldie’ Taylor and Lt. Penelope Honeycutt-Parker fly into the RAF Base the same day the Iraqi rebels of the Golden Square lay the place to siege by occupying the heights just outside the perimeter wire. They find themselves in a situation that is described to Maj. Randal “in terms an American can understand…this is 1836 and you just checked in to the Hotel Alamo”. What happens next is an action packed story of a battle that has been lost to history.
Click to download and read Chapter 1.
BUY NOW: Paperback and Kindle 
Guerrilla Command
Guerrilla Command is the Fifth in the Raiding Forces Series. Maj. John Randal has raised five Mule Raiding Battalions of Abyssinian Patriots 600 miles behind Italian lines commanded by British officers, deserters from the the Vichy French Foreign Legion, volunteers for Special Service from the Cavalry Division, adventurers, big game hunters and mercenaries from the colonies. Even one American, Capt. Geronimo Joe McKoy. The major’s mission is to cut the Italian strategic roads and the single rail line that runs from Addis Abba to the coast and to prevent Fascist Forces from freely shifting troops from one front to another as the Emperor, escorted by Col. Orde Wingate, the Kaid out of the Sudan and East Africa Force out of Kenya launch their three-pronged invasion.
Click to download and read Chapter 1.
BUY NOW: Paperback and Kindle
Roman Candle
In this sequel to Blood Wings, U.S. Major John Randal, commander of Strategic Raiding Forces, returns in Roman Candle, the second book in a trilogy within the Raiding Forces Series about the Abyssinian Campaign.
Major Randal is raising a guerrilla army 600 miles behind the enemy lines in Italian East Africa. In the north Col. Orde Wingate will be leading a column of rag-tad band of Patriots to install the exiled Emperor back on his thorn, out of the Sudan the Kaid will be attacking with two Indian Divisions into the mountainous Kern stronghold and from the south out of Kenya the East Africa Force will be attacking up the Red Sea coastline to clear it of Italians in order for the British Middle East Command to qualify for Lend Lease. The Empire Forces are attacking against at least 10 to 1 odds. The only hope of success is for Major Randal’s guerrilla army, called Force N, to disrupt the Blackshirts lines-of communications and for the attacking army’s to maintain the element of surprise. At the last minute it is learned the Italians have a master spy in Kenya. Unless he is discovered and eliminated the invasion will fail.
Click to download and read the first chapter.
BUY NOW: Paperback and Kindle.
Blood Wings
In Blood Wings, the third book of the Raiding Forces Series, Major John Randal parachutes into the heart of Abyssinia to raise a guerrilla army—in order to tie down the Italians in advance of an invasion by British Empire Forces out of the Sudan and Kenya. The Abyssinian Campaign is a colonial war right out of the 19th Century—replete with bi-planes, camel caravans, mule cavalry, bandits who wear Tom Mix, a runaway Emperor whose slave carries the world’s only Royal Umbrella and a column commanded by a British officer who wears an alarm clock tied to his wrist by a blue ribbon. And, it’s all based on historical fact. Blood Wings is the first in a three-book trilogy within the Raiding Forces Series about the Abyssinian Campaign.
Click to download and read the first chapter.
BUY NOW: Paperback and Kindle.
Dead Eagles
In this sequel to Those Who Dare, U.S.Major John Randal, Commander of Strategic Raiding Forces is back, leading a crew of British Commandos, Royal Marines and Royal Navy raiders on bigger and bolder missions to foil Hitler’s Third Reich. Off the Gold Coast colony in Africa, the Germans are operating a naval intelligence ring that gathers information about British convoys in the southern sea-lane. Couriers carry the data to nearby Rio Bonita, a tiny Portuguese island protectorate, whence they are broadcast to Nazi U-boats and surface raiders from a clandestine radio station onboard one of three interned enemy ships. As a result, British convoys vital to the war effort are ravaged. Major Randal and the Raiding Forces mission is to invade neutral Rio Bonita and spirit away the three ships. Failure means either imprisonment or hanging for piracy-and that Portugal will declare war on its oldest ally. Peopling Dead Eagles are colorful characters new and old. There is Wild West showman Captain “Geronimo Joe” McKoy, the stunning Special Operations Executive operator Lady Jane Seaborn, who adopts the Raiding Forces as her own pet project; and Lady Jane’s bombshell of a driver, Pamala Plum-Martin. Even Commander Ian Fleming puts in an appearance, submitting a plan for “Operation Ruthless”, the goal of which is to board a Luftwaffe bomber and crash it into the English Channel in order to capture an Enigma coding device from a Nazi air-sea rescue craft. This action packed adventure story features Lovat Scout Snipers, the take down of the Vichy French fleet in English ports, daring Commando raids, an epic sea battle, beautiful spies and culminates in a deadly shoot-out in a crowed bar in Occupied France.
Download the first chapter, Staging for Deployment.
BUY NOW, available in Hardcover and Kindle.
Those Who Dare
The surprise, speed, and violence of the forebears of U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Navy SEALs, and SAS Commandos prove that “those who dare, win.”
By May 1940, panzer divisions had decimated Belgium, sliced through France, and reached Calais. Lieutenant John Randal, a veteran of the U.S. 26th Cavalry Regiment, volunteers to help slow their advance. What unfolds is a blend of military guerrilla tactics, suspense, humor, and brotherly camaraderie—plus a little romance between the American GI and the widowed Lady Jane Seaborn.
Along the way readers meet such colorful characters as the movie star Captain David Niven in MO-9 and Captain “Geronimo Joe” McKoy with his Traveling Wild West Show and Shooting Emporium. The author—a decorated Ranger—covers the details of war extensively, from the five points of contact of a parachute landing fall to descriptions of a British raider’s A-5 flinging Jerries like rag dolls before the first shell casing even hits the floor.
As the novel ends, Major Randal’s men, fresh from Operation Tomcat—the first British parachute raid in France—learn they’ll deploy via sea transport within forty-eight hours on their next mission. The second book, which has already been written, tells that tale.