A Game of Birds & Wolves

A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II by Simon Parkin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Basic plot: A bit of WWII history. Not a riveting story of ocean battle, like C. S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd, but rather a study of North Atlantic battle strategies to protect allied supply convoys from German U-boat attacks. The strategies are developed by the British using a large warehouse-type floor, string, models of ships and submarines, and Wrens. Wrens are the British equivalent of the US Wacs and Waves, the women who, in my opinion, were the backbone of the armed services. WWII would not have been a victory for the allies if not for these underpaid, incredible heroines ruefully ignored in the written history of the war until recently.

Liked. Learning a hidden history.

Not so hot. The first half of the book is a backstory of submariners, officers, one-upmanship, egos – both British and German – pre-game-development. The actual game development and successful strategies aren’t presented until Chapter 11. Some, in my opinion, is fill not relevant to the story. The book is a bit misogynistic, but I suppose true to the time; the Wrens are almost incidental to the story – in reality, they were not. That’s just me; you may find it peachy.

Written by Simon Parkin, narrated by Elliot Fitzpatrick, just over ten hours of listening, released in January 2020 by Little, Brown & Company.