During the war the firefighters sat on no pedestal, they were but a part of a society that reached out for its own glories and raised its own heroes and this book is about that society, their experiences, their lives and how they constantly evolved, formed, and regrouped in the face of a threat like no Isle of Wight population had faced before or since, and hopefully never shall.

This was the year the Island was damned by the portent of a calf with two heads.

This was 1939.