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An Operational Necessity
It is January 5, 1945. A French freighter is torpedoed in the South Atlantic. By the laws of war, the shipwrecked survivors should be beyond further attack. But when the U-boat commander orders that they be shot, he justifies it as "an operational necessity." He believes that the safety of his own boat and crew depends on destroying all traces of the sinking. Only later, at an Allied tribunal after V-E Day, are the grim facts fully brought to light in a dramatic confrontation between the sole survivor and the captured German officers. Crisscrossing brilliantly from the agonies of the wounded survivors to the action aboard the hunted submarine, Gwyn Griffin divides the reader's sympathies as he probes incisively into the paradoxes of human nature and of war and its aftermath. Before his early death, Griffin was hailed as a storyteller to surpass his contemporaries Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes. The proof is here, in a novel that ends with one of the most harrowing courtroom scenes in modern fiction.
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Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 10, 2011
minor editing and added a star 6/10/11
This novel is based loosely on a WW II incident in which the U-852 sank an allied freighter, the Peleus, and then machine-gunned the survivors in order to evade detection. [More information at http://www.uboataces.com/articles-war....]
Griffin follows the crew of the sub and the survivors of the freighter as their destinies become enmeshed. It’s a complicated story that raises a host of moral issues. The sub is on her last patrol, everyone knows the war will soon be over, the ship is depth charged and almost sunk, and morale is low because of the machine-gunning of the survivors of a French ship they had torpedoed. The captain’s rationale for killing the survivors had been to protect the crew by preventing any survivors from reaching help and announcing their position. Later, in a parallel event, he is forced to kill one of his crew to prevent the sinking of the boat. They had just been badly depth-charged and the box had been stove in, only a torpedo that had fallen on a crew member, preventing the bow from completely collapsing. Moving the torpedo to save the crewman's life will inevitably remove the support for the bow and the rest of the crew will die. So he orders the man killed with an overdose of morphine.The captain vows he will surrender to the first enemy vessel they encounter rather than to face making such decisions again. Little did he know the result would be his own killing.
The novel is divided into three sections and multiple points of view: the patrol until they are attacked and forced to beach the sub just short of neutral Mozambique, the interlude in Tanzanika where several of the injured ship’s crew recuperate, and finally the trial. It’s interesting because the crewman who ultimately forces the trial is Emil, a French citizen who is scooped up by the German Navy after France had been overrun and collaborated. He thinks of himself as French, but now that the war has ended collaborators are being shot by the French so he is condemned to being considered a German POW. He is befriended by a naive little British girl who agrees to retrieve the log book (why it was not destroyed escapes me, but people do bizarre things) which had been hidden aboard the sub and now lies stranded on a reef just off Madagascar. She successfully does that only to have it fall into the worst possible hands, a British policeman who turns it over to British intelligence. It, of course, contains the only extant record of the machine gunning of the crew of the French freighter.
The members of the tribunal trying the two German officers each had their own demons: for the defense, the American, Captain Kaye, who enjoyed tweaking Patton, crediting himself with having given Patton his gastric ulcer and who wants nothing to do with the trial arguing he would most certainly have acted the same way; Meilhac,one of the French officers on the board who hates the British more than the Germans, the French having warred against England for centuries, and who never forgave the British for their destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir.
At the trial, the accused admitted to their actions but plead "not guilty" by reasons of military necessity. Their counsel pointed out that the German High Command had issued strict orders that submarines should under no circumstance assist the survivors of a torpedoed ship, often condemning them to certain death. The German captain insisted that by killing the survivors he was saving his sub and its crew because he dared not let any escape and possibly reveal the location of the sub. In Griffin's story, the stricken sub limping toward neutral Madagascar, gets stuck on a reef, ostensibly within Portuguese waters, helpless, but is strafed by a British fighter, killing many on deck.
A fascinating novel. It’s unfortunate Griffin died so young. After thinking about it, I have upgraded to five stars for its dynamic handling of complex ethical issues.
There was a similar incident involving a U.S. submarine in 1943 recounted in The Bravest Man (reading concurrently, review to appear shortly) in which the Wahoo sank a Japanese troop ship and then machined gunned the survivors' lifeboats. It was later learned that there were about 400 Indian POWs aboard. There is a competent summary of the action against the Boyu Maru troopship at http://www.warfish.com/patrol3con.html. The Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the wartime patrols of the Wahoo at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Waho.... In Paul Fussell’s The Boy’s Crusade http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... Fussell recounts the shooting of unarmed German prisoners after the landing in Italy. Morality in wartime is an oxymoron.
I have always argued that the Nuremberg trials set a standard that might come back to haunt the Allies. Was the captain justified in making a decision based on what he considered to be an “operational necessity?” Indeed, the clamor for trying U.S. servicemen as war criminals for actions committed in Iraq and Afghanistan remain muted only because we seem to be winning, whatever that means.
This novel is based loosely on a WW II incident in which the U-852 sank an allied freighter, the Peleus, and then machine-gunned the survivors in order to evade detection. [More information at http://www.uboataces.com/articles-war....]
Griffin follows the crew of the sub and the survivors of the freighter as their destinies become enmeshed. It’s a complicated story that raises a host of moral issues. The sub is on her last patrol, everyone knows the war will soon be over, the ship is depth charged and almost sunk, and morale is low because of the machine-gunning of the survivors of a French ship they had torpedoed. The captain’s rationale for killing the survivors had been to protect the crew by preventing any survivors from reaching help and announcing their position. Later, in a parallel event, he is forced to kill one of his crew to prevent the sinking of the boat. They had just been badly depth-charged and the box had been stove in, only a torpedo that had fallen on a crew member, preventing the bow from completely collapsing. Moving the torpedo to save the crewman's life will inevitably remove the support for the bow and the rest of the crew will die. So he orders the man killed with an overdose of morphine.The captain vows he will surrender to the first enemy vessel they encounter rather than to face making such decisions again. Little did he know the result would be his own killing.
The novel is divided into three sections and multiple points of view: the patrol until they are attacked and forced to beach the sub just short of neutral Mozambique, the interlude in Tanzanika where several of the injured ship’s crew recuperate, and finally the trial. It’s interesting because the crewman who ultimately forces the trial is Emil, a French citizen who is scooped up by the German Navy after France had been overrun and collaborated. He thinks of himself as French, but now that the war has ended collaborators are being shot by the French so he is condemned to being considered a German POW. He is befriended by a naive little British girl who agrees to retrieve the log book (why it was not destroyed escapes me, but people do bizarre things) which had been hidden aboard the sub and now lies stranded on a reef just off Madagascar. She successfully does that only to have it fall into the worst possible hands, a British policeman who turns it over to British intelligence. It, of course, contains the only extant record of the machine gunning of the crew of the French freighter.
The members of the tribunal trying the two German officers each had their own demons: for the defense, the American, Captain Kaye, who enjoyed tweaking Patton, crediting himself with having given Patton his gastric ulcer and who wants nothing to do with the trial arguing he would most certainly have acted the same way; Meilhac,one of the French officers on the board who hates the British more than the Germans, the French having warred against England for centuries, and who never forgave the British for their destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir.
At the trial, the accused admitted to their actions but plead "not guilty" by reasons of military necessity. Their counsel pointed out that the German High Command had issued strict orders that submarines should under no circumstance assist the survivors of a torpedoed ship, often condemning them to certain death. The German captain insisted that by killing the survivors he was saving his sub and its crew because he dared not let any escape and possibly reveal the location of the sub. In Griffin's story, the stricken sub limping toward neutral Madagascar, gets stuck on a reef, ostensibly within Portuguese waters, helpless, but is strafed by a British fighter, killing many on deck.
A fascinating novel. It’s unfortunate Griffin died so young. After thinking about it, I have upgraded to five stars for its dynamic handling of complex ethical issues.
There was a similar incident involving a U.S. submarine in 1943 recounted in The Bravest Man (reading concurrently, review to appear shortly) in which the Wahoo sank a Japanese troop ship and then machined gunned the survivors' lifeboats. It was later learned that there were about 400 Indian POWs aboard. There is a competent summary of the action against the Boyu Maru troopship at http://www.warfish.com/patrol3con.html. The Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the wartime patrols of the Wahoo at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Waho.... In Paul Fussell’s The Boy’s Crusade http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... Fussell recounts the shooting of unarmed German prisoners after the landing in Italy. Morality in wartime is an oxymoron.
I have always argued that the Nuremberg trials set a standard that might come back to haunt the Allies. Was the captain justified in making a decision based on what he considered to be an “operational necessity?” Indeed, the clamor for trying U.S. servicemen as war criminals for actions committed in Iraq and Afghanistan remain muted only because we seem to be winning, whatever that means.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 26, 2025
(I have finally finished my review and I apologise for those who have posted previously)
There are many things to be said for this novel and even more for the author but first I can't help quoting a long piece from near the end of the novel (page 408 in the original edition) when one of the many finely realised characters stands in a muddy field following the execution of two men:
"Alone in the silence he stood under the increasing rain, and he felt many things that were too confused for immediate comprehension yet which he knew he would recall later and understand. But beyond them all, soberly and compassionately, he saw plainly the immense fallibility of mankind - something which he would never now forget; a legacy perhaps from the dead men. That he had been born into age as stupid as it was wicked he had guessed darkly from his earliest years...he had lived his short life in a society largely dominated by the cruel and corrupt generation which had striven so ignobly in the mud of Flanders thirty years ago; a generation so maddened by the memories of what it had done that it had been forced to re-enact the bloody horror as murderer is driven to return to the scene of his crime. He had feared and hated the men of that era who ruled ordered and controlled the powerful institutions of Nation State, and Army - great capital letters as heavy and black as the execution stakes between which he now stood. But from today the hatred would change to sad contempt, the fear dwindle and disappear entirely - for he had seen a summary of all these things in action and he knew them, at last, for the stupid, childish mockery of what they popularly were supposed to be. Behind all thee pomp and glory and rhetoric and high-minded speeches there was nothing but a narrow, dull and dirty room, in which an idiot child crawled over a cold floor crushing small spiders with his fingers."
This is one of the great coruscating denunciations of the entire post WWII British establishment - it rivals Archie Rice's 'dead eye' speech in 'The Entertainer' - though of course no one remembers it, this novel, or the author.
Although it is invariably stated that this novel is based on the 'Peleus' affair (see amongst many sites dealing with the event https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-...) this novel is at most inspired by the incident and most of the novel is wildly different from its 'source' though I do believe that the trial episode draws heavily on the trial transcript of those accused of unlawful killing in the Peleus affair.
The great strength of this novel like the author's dazzling 'A Significant Experience' it is a war novel by a man who loathes war and the hypocrisies of those who send young men off to die with a passion but has a unlimited sympathy and understanding for those young men. 'An Operational Necessity' constantly keeps before your eyes how young the u-boat officers and crew are, just like many of the crew of the French freighter they sink. His real ire is reserved for the officers and officialdom who condemn the young Germans for doing what many Allied submarine officers had done with less reason and to great praise (see my footnote *1 below). Overall Griffin rightly viewed the moral revulsion and condemnation of u-boats by the British as so much sour grapes - they didn't accept that anyone had a right to challenge their control of the oceans.
But 'An Operational Necessity' is not simply a polemical novel, Griffin does not let his sympathies lie with any side - he presents brilliantly the crew of the doomed freighter, its survivors, and the crew of the u-boat and the terribly decision its crew is faced with (please see my footnote *2 below). He also provides a scintillating portrait of British colonial society in Africa where the u-boats crew recuperate. The court room scenes are brilliant and the ending superb. I can't praise this novel enough. It well deserves rediscovery and reissue and I am delighted that it has attracted eight other reviews in recent years. Gwyn Griffin is often compared to writers like Alistair Maclean or Hammond Innes - but I can remember reading those novelists as a teenager and they had nothing of the depth of insight into, nor analysis of, their characters complexities nor the moral ambiguities they faced.
Tragically this was Griffin's last novel as he died tragically from a blood infection at the age of 45.
*1 Gwyn Griffin didn't know, and it would be decades before anyone knew about Rear Admiral Anthony Miers winner of the VC see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony..., and Dudley W. Morton who murdered not simply Japenese sailors but British Indian troops taken prisoner (how was a Southern USA born and raised man to distinguish between one darky and another) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_..., but it he wouldn't have been surprised.
*2 I do believe that Mr. Griffin's portrayal of life on a u-boat life and its terrible dangers is the best and unrivalled until the 1985 'Das Boot' TV series, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot, for full details.
There are many things to be said for this novel and even more for the author but first I can't help quoting a long piece from near the end of the novel (page 408 in the original edition) when one of the many finely realised characters stands in a muddy field following the execution of two men:
"Alone in the silence he stood under the increasing rain, and he felt many things that were too confused for immediate comprehension yet which he knew he would recall later and understand. But beyond them all, soberly and compassionately, he saw plainly the immense fallibility of mankind - something which he would never now forget; a legacy perhaps from the dead men. That he had been born into age as stupid as it was wicked he had guessed darkly from his earliest years...he had lived his short life in a society largely dominated by the cruel and corrupt generation which had striven so ignobly in the mud of Flanders thirty years ago; a generation so maddened by the memories of what it had done that it had been forced to re-enact the bloody horror as murderer is driven to return to the scene of his crime. He had feared and hated the men of that era who ruled ordered and controlled the powerful institutions of Nation State, and Army - great capital letters as heavy and black as the execution stakes between which he now stood. But from today the hatred would change to sad contempt, the fear dwindle and disappear entirely - for he had seen a summary of all these things in action and he knew them, at last, for the stupid, childish mockery of what they popularly were supposed to be. Behind all thee pomp and glory and rhetoric and high-minded speeches there was nothing but a narrow, dull and dirty room, in which an idiot child crawled over a cold floor crushing small spiders with his fingers."
This is one of the great coruscating denunciations of the entire post WWII British establishment - it rivals Archie Rice's 'dead eye' speech in 'The Entertainer' - though of course no one remembers it, this novel, or the author.
Although it is invariably stated that this novel is based on the 'Peleus' affair (see amongst many sites dealing with the event https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-...) this novel is at most inspired by the incident and most of the novel is wildly different from its 'source' though I do believe that the trial episode draws heavily on the trial transcript of those accused of unlawful killing in the Peleus affair.
The great strength of this novel like the author's dazzling 'A Significant Experience' it is a war novel by a man who loathes war and the hypocrisies of those who send young men off to die with a passion but has a unlimited sympathy and understanding for those young men. 'An Operational Necessity' constantly keeps before your eyes how young the u-boat officers and crew are, just like many of the crew of the French freighter they sink. His real ire is reserved for the officers and officialdom who condemn the young Germans for doing what many Allied submarine officers had done with less reason and to great praise (see my footnote *1 below). Overall Griffin rightly viewed the moral revulsion and condemnation of u-boats by the British as so much sour grapes - they didn't accept that anyone had a right to challenge their control of the oceans.
But 'An Operational Necessity' is not simply a polemical novel, Griffin does not let his sympathies lie with any side - he presents brilliantly the crew of the doomed freighter, its survivors, and the crew of the u-boat and the terribly decision its crew is faced with (please see my footnote *2 below). He also provides a scintillating portrait of British colonial society in Africa where the u-boats crew recuperate. The court room scenes are brilliant and the ending superb. I can't praise this novel enough. It well deserves rediscovery and reissue and I am delighted that it has attracted eight other reviews in recent years. Gwyn Griffin is often compared to writers like Alistair Maclean or Hammond Innes - but I can remember reading those novelists as a teenager and they had nothing of the depth of insight into, nor analysis of, their characters complexities nor the moral ambiguities they faced.
Tragically this was Griffin's last novel as he died tragically from a blood infection at the age of 45.
*1 Gwyn Griffin didn't know, and it would be decades before anyone knew about Rear Admiral Anthony Miers winner of the VC see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony..., and Dudley W. Morton who murdered not simply Japenese sailors but British Indian troops taken prisoner (how was a Southern USA born and raised man to distinguish between one darky and another) see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_..., but it he wouldn't have been surprised.
*2 I do believe that Mr. Griffin's portrayal of life on a u-boat life and its terrible dangers is the best and unrivalled until the 1985 'Das Boot' TV series, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot, for full details.
May 11, 2013
one of the first books i ever stole from the school library
August 17, 2018
Griffin definitely had a different kind of voice, especially for his time. His characters are drawn well, even when they are minor players, and his experience of British colonial life enriches the book. There are a few clunky moments in the u boat scenes, especially a mistake about a 'drop keel' that was not used in submarine design much past the turn of the century, but that can be dismissed. The middle section of the trial drags down a bit and I was thinking it would just keep descending to a very wobbly ending, but he surprised me, and really redeemed the story in the last 70 pages to a grim, grim ending that I had really not suspected was on the horizon. Very well done, to retrieve it like that.
I'm not sure I would ever read it a second time, but chasing it down for its obscurity related to u boat operations was necessary for me, as it's based loosely on real events. Not for everyone, certainly.
I'm not sure I would ever read it a second time, but chasing it down for its obscurity related to u boat operations was necessary for me, as it's based loosely on real events. Not for everyone, certainly.
July 20, 2016
When the Germans decided to begin unrestricted warfare in WW1 and again in WW2, they threw out any "rules of war" enacted by treaties beforehand. U-boat Captains were puppets on Admiral Donitz's strings, via wireless, yet, they often made decisions without considering all the consequences of their actions.
The late Peter O'Toole acted in the movie title "Murphy's War", (1970) which has a similar theme as this book.
I have no doubt, that had the Axis powers won the war, several trials and executions of Allied forces would have occurred as well.
To the victors belong the spoils.
If you won the war, stand up!
The late Peter O'Toole acted in the movie title "Murphy's War", (1970) which has a similar theme as this book.
I have no doubt, that had the Axis powers won the war, several trials and executions of Allied forces would have occurred as well.
To the victors belong the spoils.
If you won the war, stand up!
April 21, 2020
What started slowly and with a seemingly pointless killing off of 90% of the characters gradually added layer after meaningful layer, to cohese into a powerful WWII naval court trial and its painful judgment and conclusion. My opinion on this novel did a 180° ; now I’d say that it’s definitely a worthy read.
Apart from clearly dated terms used to describe different races and ethnicities (let’s hope that people don’t think / speak this way any more), and a few strange and thankfully brief interludes of sexuality, it was a captivating, informative book.
Apart from clearly dated terms used to describe different races and ethnicities (let’s hope that people don’t think / speak this way any more), and a few strange and thankfully brief interludes of sexuality, it was a captivating, informative book.
June 22, 2016
Brilliant, gripping book, about wartime ethics masterfully crafted. Highly recommend.
December 6, 2018
Easy reading.. WWII dilemma.
October 10, 2022
great presentation of moral dilemmas
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