Stand By for Action: The Memoirs of a Small Ship Commander in World War II

Book Review - Five Stars

Stand By for Action: The Memoirs of a Small Ship Commander in World War II by William Donald

This book is a ship commander's biographical account of WWII from the German invasion of Norway to the war years of bombardment, torpedoing, mining the sea and soil on Britten. It moves next to the Mediterranean and the bloody battle of Anzio, Italy, followed by The D-day invasion of Europe, and ultimatley on to Hong Kong and Japanese capitulation. The author was a part of it all, and he eloquently described his personal sediments. An excellent book that reads like a novel.

Excerpts:

29th November, 1941, after a fierce attack by E-boats on a southbound convoy, two ships being sunk, Asperity (699) and Cormash (2,848), a very similar action took place, with an interception off the Dutch coast. Though indecisive with damage and casualties on both sides, the knowledge that on every future sortie against East Coast convoys they were liable to be intercepted on the way home must have given the enemy considerable food for thought. Even so, in 1941, the E-boats sank twenty-three ships, total tonnage 48,888: five of these ships were sunk in one attack on March 7th.

During the winter of 1944-45, the East Coast convoys were virtually unmolested, except for a sudden flare-up in the early months of 1945, when five ships were sunk of tonnage 10,221. Several fierce battles were fought, but by April, 1945, the spirit of the E-boats was broken and all attacks ceased.

The size of the initial force to be landed made me gasp. Five divisions of men of a comparative strength of sixty per cent British and Canadian to forty per cent American.

One day the dawn would come when the Allied Armies set foot in France. For four years the enemy had held the whole Atlantic seaboard from Norway to Spain; for four years, aided by his U-boats, this awful menace had hung over us like a permanent black cloud; for four years, also, millions had waited, desperate for this dawn, the dawn that would lead to their liberation.

After four years, the dawn had come at last, and victory was ours; the day was won, the Army had landed on the shores of France. For whatever the future held in store, whatever setbacks there were to come, however hard the fighting might be, the first and hardest hurdle had been jumped that morning, D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944.