The First To Land - Douglas Reeman

Internationally famous for his novels of World War II, Douglas Reeman also has a huge world following as Alexander Kent for his novels of the 19th-century navy - the Richard Bolitho books. With Badge of Glory he extended his remarkable talents as a storyteller in a colourful and dramatic new saga, spanning 150 years, about a seafaring family called the Blackwoods and the service in which successive generations make their career - the Royal Marines. Badge of Glory opened in the year 1850. The First to Land, the second novel in the series, takes the story 50 years on, to the last year of Queen Victoria’s reign and another member of the family. At twenty-seven Captain David Blackwood of the Royal Marines Light Infantry is already a hero and a holder of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour. But he has yet to discover the depths and heights of passion and the ultimate in courage and endurance.
In 1900 the fast-spreading might of the British Empire is beginning to be challenged on every side. The might of the Royal Navy still dominates the world’s oceans, but almost weekly the crammed troopships leave Southampton and Liverpool for far-flung trouble-spots to uphold the name and the honour of an ailing Queen.
In China the hatred and resentment levelled at the foreign devils is at first scoffed at as another local skirmish. But as the Boxer Rebellion explodes into a bloody war the Royal Navy sends in its Marines under Blackwood’s command to meet a fanatically cruel enemy in an alien landscape.