The Silent Service

Other than the first story featuring the sinking of the German Graf Spee, Pocket Battleship by the HMNZS Achilles in the Battle of the River Plate, the NZ Navy gets only a passing mention, so the subtitle Action Stories of the ANZAC Navy is a little over-generous to us Kiwis.

This is explained somewhat in the Author's Note - in that the two authors we reliant on men they could contact when they were writing the book to provide the stories, and as they were in Australia there were a limited amount of Kiwis to interview. Maybe they didn't look around the Gold Coast for Kiwis?

Notwithstanding the minimal inclusion of Kiwi stories, this is a great little collection of very short stories - many only 3-4 pages, very few longer than 10 pages, and some which are continued in a series of several stories. All are World War II stories, featuring the Australian Navy ships.

Many of the stories are narrated by one or more servicemen - often swapping back and forward to contribute different parts of a story. Other stories are fully narrated by Idriess and/or Jones. They all read well, have been edited down to remove any superfluous text. The introduction reinforces that they wanted to include at least one story from each of the Australian Navy ships, but some have many more and lots of the stories feature multiple ships. There are also stories about the Merchant Navy and the minesweepers.

There are stories from all over the globe, wherever there were sea battles in WWII. I added the shelves for those counties closest associated, but of course, for the most past the battles were at sea! Not always however, as there were many stories about Malta where ships were dry-docked for repairs while under attack, and a few of the stories related to taking civilians, nurses or soldiers off land in rescue missions. They are stories of bravery, winning against the odds, sad loses and sacrifices made.

Some stories that stick in my memory are the bombing of Darwin; the soldiers who stayed defending Malta against the Italians who were able to unleash so many bombing raids; running the gauntlet to Tobrok in Libya to keep them supplied; the evacuation of Singapore and Batavia (Jakarta) when overrun by the Japanese and the run through the Sunda Strait to be clear of the Japanese fleet who were massing in the Java Sea.

For those Ion Idriess fans, this book doesn't really take his voice or his writing style. However it is a well curated collection, which reads well in fits and starts or a continuous read.

Like many books of this type, its importance is in recording the stories, as lets face it, few of these men would have told their stories if they had not been pressed to be interviewed.

4 stars