Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An ordinary person doing an extraordinary job!, 11 Jun 2006
Anyone who has an interest in the Royal Navy, HMS Nigeria and the Russian and Malta Convoys in particular will therefore find this particular volume especially helpful, as it recalls the wartime service of a naive young man who joined the Royal Navy as a boy seaman before hostilities broke out and served through to the very end of the war, when he left as a man with a combination of happy, sad , funny and some most unusual experiences behind him.
From a researchers point of view, the recruiting and training procedures in the navy at the time are both interesting and informative, however the recollections of the life he led, when he finally went to sea on HMS Nigeria give the reader a true insight into life aboard a Royal Navy cruiser at that time. Accurate descriptions of these fighting ships together with the horrific conditions suffered at sea and in the frozen Artic Circle, together with battle conditions when they were attacked by enemy aircraft, bigger ships with larger guns and submarines with torpedoes and sadly the death of his comrades are all included. There is an excellent amount of very well produced technical drawings of equipment used aboard ship and some good colour and black and white photographs too.
Of course, many biographies have already been written by famous high ranking naval officers, however this is the biography of a very ordinary person, doing an extraordinary job. This book kept me engrossed for hours.
In naval terms - "Bravo Zulu" (for landlubbers, this means well done!)
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An account of an RN boy entrant's WW2 experiences., 23 Mar 2006
This is a excellent book, detailing the life in the Royal Navy throughout WW2 by a very young boy entrant.
Jack Edwards grew up in the RN during WW2, and his experiences make very compelling reading. I found the details of the Russian convoys that he served on were particularly interesting. I had read many comments about the hardships that the RN and Merchant Navies suffered on those journeys, but this was the first time I had read an account by a survivor of them.
He describes them with a good deal of humour, but it could not have been much fun, when every day could be your last, and was, for a lot of the boy entrants who joined the Navy with him. This was a rapid growing up indeed.
Looking back after sixty years to those different, difficult times, it amazes me how much we asked our young men and women to do for us, and how well they did it.
Edwards narrates his war from the lower deck point of view, with no axes to grind, and no reputations to protect, and it's all the better for that.
This book makes very good reading and is very highly recommended.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Growing up in the Royal Navy at war, 29 Aug 2006
This book gives a fascinating insight how one young man grew up amongst the war at sea. It follows his life in the navy from School at HMS St Vincent in Portsmouth at 15 to the war against the Japanese via almost all the main theatres, the Mediterranean, North Atlantic and Arctic. The book is copiously illustrated with pictures illustrating many of the events he recounts and the ships and equipment around which the lives of the author and his colleagues revolved.
You get a very real sense of one young mans war. It is touching, humane and I would thoroughly recommend it.
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by Peter C. Smith
