Putting the Royal Engineers where they belong. At the centre of the story.
First in, last out · Billy MacLeod MBE
THE SERIES
From 1939 to 1945
The six novels of A Sapper’s Story follow Donald ‘Donnie’ MacIver and the men of the Royal Engineers through the Second World War, from the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 to the war’s end in 1945. The Sappers were always there: on the beaches at Dunkirk, the deserts of North Africa, building the Bailey bridges through Italy, across the hedgerows of Normandy and the advance into Germany. Yet they have rarely stood at the centre of the story. A Sapper’s Story sets out to put that right. Each book stands on its own. Read together, they trace one of the most demanding operational records of the Royal Engineers through six years of war. The units are real, the ground is real, the history is real. Only the men are imagined.
The man at the centre
Sapper Donald 'Donnie' MacIver
The series is told through the eyes of Donnie MacIver, a Glasgow shipyard riveter from Byron Street, Partick, who joins the Royal Engineers just before war is declared. Trained as a Sapper, he is posted to the 59th Field Company with the British Expeditionary Force in France, where he sees out the Phoney War. When Germany attacks on the 10th of May, the BEF advances to the Dyle Line near Brussels, only for that advance to turn, within days, into the retreat to Dunkirk. Donnie's parents are drawn from Billy's own grandparents from Lower Shader on the Isle of Lewis, and the Glasgow streets he walks are the streets where Billy was born. The men of Two Section, 59th Field Company, carry the backgrounds and sometimes the names of the men Billy served with. What Donnie does inside that company is fiction, built on real events.
THE BOOKS
Six novels. One Sapper.
Released at six-month intervals from October 2026.
A Sapper's Story - 1940 - Retreat to Dunkirk
Donnie MacIver leaves the shipyards of Glasgow and joins the Royal Engineers as war begins. From Shorncliffe training to the fields, roads, bridges and demolition points of France and Belgium, he learns what it means to be a Sapper. As the British Expeditionary Force falls back towards Dunkirk, Donnie and Two Section are drawn into the retreat, the Ypres-Comines Canal counter-attack and the desperate work of keeping men moving when everything around them is breaking down.
After Dunkirk, Donnie returns to Britain with the survivors of the 59th Field Company. Posted to the 4th Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, he is sent to North Africa. In the desert, the war becomes one of heat, dust, water discipline, mines, anti-tank ditches and fast-moving armour. Operation Compass turns into the long siege of Tobruk, where Donnie and his new section work by night, endure bombing by day, and become part of the legend of the Rats of Tobruk.
A Sapper's Story - 1942-43 - From El Alamein to Tunis
The desert war turns against the British as Rommel drives east and Tobruk falls. Donnie and the 4th Field Squadron are forced back towards Egypt, where the Eighth Army makes its stand at El Alamein. In the darkness of Operation Lightfoot, the Sappers crawl into the minefields ahead of the armour, cutting wire, lifting mines and opening lanes. El Alamein becomes the turning point, but not the end. The advance west through Libya into Tunisia is paid for, yard by yard.
A Sapper's Story - 1943 - The Road Through Italy
With North Africa won, Donnie and the Desert Rats leave the desert behind for a new kind of war. From Salerno to Naples and the Volturno, the Sappers are at the front of the work. Open desert gives way to mountains, rain, mud, blown bridges, river crossings and narrow roads that trap men and vehicles alike. Italy is not the sweeping advance people imagine after victory in Africa. It is cold water, heavy steel, exhausted men and the slow grinding cost of keeping the advance alive.
After years abroad, Donnie returns to Britain to prepare for the invasion of Europe. The 4th Field Squadron crosses to Normandy after D-Day. Gold Beach, the bocage, Villers-Bocage, Goodwood, Bluecoat and the Falaise Pocket turn the war into a close, brutal struggle through mines, hedgerows, wrecked roads and burning vehicles. The Sappers clear lanes, breach obstacles and open routes under fire, carrying the practical work of invasion one yard at a time.
A Sapper's Story - 1945 - The Last Road Home
The final year takes Donnie into Germany. The Sappers bridge rivers, repair roads, clear mines and keep the Desert Rats moving towards Hamburg. The crossing of the Rhine becomes their last great engineering test. Then comes Belsen, where Sapper work changes from battlecraft to the grim labour of survival. The war ends, but Donnie does not simply return unchanged. Germany, demob, Glasgow, grief and the pull of Lower Shader bring the series full circle.
