Destroyer: An Anthology of First-Hand Accounts by Those Who Served on the B- and C-Class Destroyers in the Second World War

Rating:
Summary: An anthology is a scrapbook
Review: by another name. Redundancy makes for tedium in this book. Far from being "a book which matches and complements that bestseller of the postwar years, The Cruel Sea," as the usually meticulous Len Deighton claims, the book rises to that level only when selections from that book are presented. The stories are interesting, mostly. They demonstrate, again, that England, not the United States, won the battle of the Atlantic, and they show how brave men suffered. But the book's strategy, following the career of one class of destroyers, limits its scope and pool of potential readers. Also ideosyncratic are its appendixes--nautical terms, histories for ships mentioned, and obituaries of key figures. But these are welcome; I could do without verses, as none can confuse these with poetry. It's well that the profits from the book sale will be used to restore "the sole remaining Second World War British destroyer."

Rating:
Summary: An anthology is a scrapbook
Review: by another name. Redundancy makes for tedium in this book. Far from being "a book which matches and complements that bestseller of the postwar years, The Cruel Sea," as the usually meticulous Len Deighton claims, the book rises to that level only when selections from that book are presented. The stories are interesting, mostly. They demonstrate, again, that England, not the United States, won the battle of the Atlantic, and they show how brave men suffered. But the book's strategy, following the career of one class of destroyers, limits its scope and pool of potential readers. Also ideosyncratic are its appendices--nautical terms, histories for ships mentioned, and obituaries of key figures. But these are welcome; I could do without verses, though, as none can be confused with poetry. It's well that the profits from the book sale will be used to restore "the sole remaining Second World War British destroyer."