Derek Nudd's Blog, page 3

Monsignor Quixote

Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This retelling of Cervantes' story places a priest and a communist ex-mayor in (just) post-fascist Spain, sharing the challenges of a vaguely-defined road trip and a temperamental old Seat 600. Each is forced to weigh his faith against his doubts, their friendship and their discovery of the world around them. In a work that combines readability with thoughtfulness Greene challenges us to look beyond our silos and understand that people who see things differently do not have to be monsters. This is a message at least as relevant to our time as a to any other.



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Normandy: The sailors' story

Normandy: the Sailors' Story: A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle for France by Nick Hewitt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers - in literature and film the story of D-Day tends to start when the landing craft ramp drops or the jump light flares green. Hewitt looks at it from a different angle. He describes the Battle of the Seine Bay as the second most important naval campaign in the west, after the Battle of the Atlantic. He notionally defines it as running from the 1943 decision to land in Normandy to the fall of Le Havre on 12 September 1944.
Throughout the period the German defenders used destroyers, torpedo boats, submarines, coastal artillery, aircraft, mines and ultimately the desperate 'small battle units' against increasing odds to deter and then disrupt the approaching storm. Once it broke, as Hewitt points out, a single transport sunk could cost the Allies equipment and more importantly personnel equivalent to weeks of combat losses.
Overall it went well, which obscures the fact that it was not cost-free. During Operation Neptune alone the British Naval Staff History cites 917 ships and smaller craft lost or damaged (out of some 7,000 taking part). This was a significant percentage in its own right, not least because it represented a similar number of craft unavailable for the follow-up.
Hewitt covers each aspect of the operation in detail, from establishing control of the Channel and beach reconnaissance to logistic organisation and a separate look at each beach. The Mulberry Harbours and Pluto pipeline are covered as is the defence of the beaches up to the final withdrawal of Kriegsmarine forces from the Channel and Biscay ports. His tribute to the work of RN beachmasters' organisation reminded me of a comment in one of my father's letters home: 'The atmosphere was very hearty and congenial, as Vic Boyes remarked, even the MPs were smiling at us. '
Mines were perhaps the greatest danger, with continuous laying and novel influence mines occasionally defeating even the most strenuous sweeping efforts. Never mind the danger to the poor sweepers! One novel countermeasure not mentioned was the use of army gun laying radar from 112 and 146 Heavy AA Regiments to track minelaying aircraft off Arromanches and Port-en-Bessin. The sets were accurate enough to spot the fall of mines and direct navy minesweepers to the appropriate track (History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery: Anti-Aircraft Artillery P.313).
This book is a valuable addition to the literature on the subject. Opinions will vary on some of Hewitt's arguments - I have heard differing views on the value of shore bombardment and the reasons for the loss of the American Mulberry, for example. A few (very few) typos have squeezed past the editors ('let he who is without sin cast the first stone'). There is a useful plate section in the middle, comprehensive notes, bibliography and index.
So, definitely a four-star keeper then.



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Dreadnought

Dreadnought: Britain,Germany and the Coming of the Great War by Robert K Massie (13-Dec-2007) Paperback by Robert K. Massie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Most of us think of the First World War starting when Gavrilo Princip fired a fatal shot which triggered a web of interlocking treaties, dragging Europe and then the globe into a pointless cataclysm.
Massie steps back and looks at the grinding tectonic forces that just might have made the war inevitable, despite the struggles of politicians on all sides.
The first nine chapters (this is a big book) deal with Queen Victoria's failed attempt to ensure European peace through dynastic marriages and the consolidation of Germany under Prussian control. Despite the title, there is very little focus on ships in this part. Part 2 (chapters 10-21) surveys the messy international politics and military adventures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part 3 (chapters 22-28) finally turns to the Royal Navy, Part 4 (29-38) to the growing tension between Britain and Germany and Part 5 (39-46) the road to Armageddon.
Some key points emerge. From the British perspective, policy had always been to support the weaker continental power(s) and prevent any one nation establishing hegemony. That given, they were welcome to fight among themselves so long as they left control of the sea to us. As an island nation, free use of the sea lanes was life or death to Britain but a 'luxury' to the continental powers.
Germany, on the other hand, had unified and then defeated both Austria and France. Its population and economic growth rate far outstripped its competitors, and in the space of a decade or so it acquired overseas colonies in Africa and the Far East. The Kaiser, both admiring and resentful of British maritime power, did not see why his access to foreign trade should be by grace of his uncle's ships.
Things came to a head with the 'Navy Scare' of 1909. In the previous year the British Liberal Government had cut the Dreadnought building programme to two per year. The German Navy Law had sanctioned four. Worse, it was believed that Krupp was stockpiling guns and armour plate for a building surge which would allow the German navy to match the Royal Navy ship for ship before British yards could respond. Diplomats insisted that German building was for their own needs only, but it was clear that their focus was on modern, short-range battleships whose only plausible use was in the North Sea. Against Britain.
And so back to the collapsing card houses of July and August 1914. With Austria and Russia at war Germany was committed to helping Austria. But to attack Russia they had to knock France out first - hence the Schlieffen Plan, which involved a massive thrust through Belgium to bypass French defences. No-one asked the Belgians.
This affected Britain in two ways: firstly as a guarantor of Belgian neutrality (which was relevant only when the Belgians chose to resist), and secondly the fear of German hegemony, which would surely be turned against the UK sooner or later.
Massie deals with the complex twist and turns of European politics well. He writes clearly and raises some interesting points, not least the embedded antisemitism of the time. When dealing with the Navy Scare it might have been worthwhile to bring in the 1909 Baltic cruise of HMS Cornwall. Ostensibly a cadet training and diplomatic glad-handing trip, the cruise also had a covert purpose: charting navigable channels, landing beaches, coastal defences and dockyards. The ship's captain was Reginald 'Blinker' Hall who later, as head of Naval Intelligence, would be one of the twentieth century's most influential spymasters.



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Mute

Mute by Richard Salsbury

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Salsbury writes a protagonist who is likeable, vulnerable, yet scarily capable - then bowls an insane sequence of challenges at him. This is the ingredient mix for a fine crime thriller and the author blends them to great effect. We follow Wes through pain and perplexity as the odds against him multiply, to the final twist. Definitely one to read.



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Longest Campaign

The Longest Campaign: Britain's Maritime Struggle in the Atlantic and Northwest Europe, 1939–1945 by Brian Walter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As a single volume work covering six years of unremitting combat we can't expect this book to delve into minute detail, and it doesn't. Events that have attracted multi-volume studies in their own right are covered in a few paragraphs. What this does very well is draw together the different threads - blockade, U-boat, airborne - of the northern battle and relate them to the wider conflict.
Some surprising insights emerge. Despite the absence of the large set-piece battles found in the Pacific and South-East Asia theatres the sheer, continuous grind of warfare in the Atlantic and northern waters let to eye-watering losses on both sides. The other side of the coin is the staggering volume of materiel delivered to Russia, Britain and Western Europe, especially in the last eleven months of the war.
The point is made with tables, lists and extensive references. The first two of these may slow the reader down a bit but are worth pausing over for a moment.



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Cruel Britannia

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture by Ian Cobain

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A curate's egg of a book, this. Aiming to dispel some comfortable myths of British exceptionalism, Ian Cobain mixes some genuinely impressive research with speculation and inference.
It starts early. Looking at the impressive results achieved by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDIC) in WW2, Cobain concludes that they produced those results quickly so they must have used torture. Transcripts of prisoner conversations provide evidence of widely varying lengths of stay, and show that the mix of direct interrogation, stool pigeons and microphones rendered violence unnecessary as well as counterproductive.
More seriously, he uses the same inferential approach to denounce MI5's Camp 020 where there is decent evidence that inmates' treatment was firm, going on harsh, but not brutal. Yet Camp 020 is repeatedly invoked as a platform on which allegations about later mistreatment stand, and in many cases where he has better contemporary evidence.
This is not to say there were no excesses. Prisoners were probably abused at the notorious London District Cage (see Helen Fry's The London Cage: The Secret History of Britain's World War II Interrogation Centre and certainly at the post-war centre in Bad Nenndorf in Germany. Robin 'Tin Eye' Stephens who headed both Camp 020 and Bad Nenndorf was tried and acquitted for the abuses there - which Cobain presents as a stitch-up. Nonetheless he went on to become a Security Service liaison officer in Accra in the Gold Coast (Ghana), which sounds distinctly like being put out to grass.
Subsequent chapters deal with the messier experiences of retreat from empire and domestic insurrection, where military and police forces have been asked to face opponents who don't wear uniform, cannot be distinguished from the civilian population, and don't acknowledge the same values or rules of combat. All of which is a perilous formula for a spiral of violence. Here Cobain's journalistic approach pays off. He has managed to track down a number of survivor accounts from both sides of the table to build a compelling story. There is just a nagging question left by the earlier lacunae: are we getting a selective account here?



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Women in Intelligence

Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars by Helen Fry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is almost always useful to look at a topic from a different angle, and Helen Fry has done this with the 20th century history of intelligence, focussing on the two world wars from a female perspective. The approach is (mostly) successful.
Dr Fry draws out a number of consistent themes: that British and Allied agencies, under the pressure of existential threat, abandoned entrenched views and appointed the most appropriate person for the job; that commanders felt women had certain abilities men lacked (while carefully not endorsing or contradicting this view); and that women had greater freedom of movement than men in occupied territories, while running the same risks if caught.
There is impressive research into the lives of many of the personalities involved, drawing on both oral and documentary sources. If anything, these stories follow too thickly upon each other and slow down the overall narrative. It's difficult to see what else she could do though, other than move some of the detail into an appendix.
There is an extensive and useful plate section.
There are a few typos and factual slips which should have been picked up by Yale's editors (tut! tut!) and which I hope will be corrected in the paperback edition. Also one or two points where I read the evidence differently - but that's normal disagreement and no reason to dock a star.



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Interrogation in War and Conflict

Interrogation in War and Conflict by Christopher Andrew

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An interesting and useful review in thirteen separately authored chapters of the development and use of interrogation in the twentieth century. It covers both intelligence sought from servicemen, who were protected to some extent by the Hague and Geneva conventions, and from insurrectionists (or dissidents) who were not. More might have been made of this point.
In a surprising statement Christopher Andrew's introduction states that the WW2 Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) 'still awaits its historian'. Neitzel's Tapping Hitler's Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations 1942-45 (2007) and Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS (2011), and Fry's The M Room: Secret Listeners who Bugged the Nazis in WW2 (2012) all predate this book, and the good coverage elsewhere is the only excuse for omitting CSDIC's remarkable work from this account. Moreover Andrew repeats the frequent (but incorrect) assertion that the controversial London Cage was part of CSDIC - a surprising slip from an intelligence historian of his calibre.
Heather Jones' chapter on the development of interrogation techniques in WW1 is a valuable contribution to a topic which has received too little attention. Its main focus is on the military aspect in forward areas with a couple of pages on naval technical intelligence toward the end. As such I feel it misses one of the most significant developments: the joint service centre set up at Cromwell Gardens in 1917. As a central facility backed by a comprehensive filing system this was the essential template for CSDIC.
Much of the rest of the book covered areas where I am unqualified to comment, except to note the frequency with which the lessons, mistakes, and sometimes people from earlier conflicts pop up again.
I must however offer a final word for Simona Tobia's concluding review, which I thought excellent.
As a private buyer it took me a while to chase down a paperback copy of this at a halfway acceptable price. As for the hardback - Routledge, who are you kidding?



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Australian Hospital Ship Centaur

Australian hospital ship Centaur: The myth of immunity by Christopher Milligan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Who sank a correctly marked and brightly lit hospital ship on a clear, calm night in May 1943? Why? How did it founder in just three minutes? How come, when the disaster was so close to shore, it took so long for anyone to notice?
The authors take a forensic approach to the multiple questions surrounding the death of the Centaur, examining the history of the ship, her crew, cargo and passengers, and the Japanese submarine flotilla operating in the area. They look at - and dismiss - alternative speculations about her sudden loss and examine the three possible culprits, settling convincingly on one.
As to why, after years of post-war obfuscation we may never know for sure. Mistake, under the circumstances, is implausible. Was there a revenge motive? Did the submarine captain think she was carrying combat troops and/or munitions? Did he simply not care? The authors have interviewed everyone they can trace and who will speak to them.
Other Allied, Axis and Imperial German incidents involving hospital ships are acknowledged. In some cases a little more information (with references) would have been useful but the inclusion provides valuable context.
The book is well written and contains several useful plate sections.



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Very Important Teapot

A Very Important Teapot by Steve Sheppard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Here's one for those who, like me, find it easier to believe in cock-up than conspiracy. Or at least that one invariably leads to the other. Multiple players doing their best for their own or their superiors' perceived interests and getting it wrong most of the time. Tension, high drama, flashes of humour and ... a teapot?



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