A page turning thriller about the wartime exploits of these prisoners freed from the Gulag on condition that they fought in the front line in punishment battalions, always given the most dangerous assignments with no retreat or the slightest wavering allowed. It's quite a horrific book, with killings and woundings on all sides graphically described, most horribly those of the Dirlewangers, an SS group of notorious criminals whose atrocities appalled even the head of the SS in occupied Poland.