SEA & AIR FIGHTING: Those Who Were There

First published in 1936, these 12 stories of daring battles by sea and air have a vividness that can only come from eyewitness accounts. Picking up 16 men from the wreckage left by a submarine attack, Gordon Campbell, Commander of the armed Decoy Q ship Pargust, knew there was imminent danger, and soon a torpedo tore through his engine room. A carefully rehearsed panic party descended to the lifeboats, complete with stuffed parrot, while the rest of the crew lay silent and invisible. The periscope of the sub was seen circling the boat, then broke surface, but Campbell held fire while the bogus "Master", pretending to escape with his crew in a lifeboat, led the sub even closer. Finally, half an hour after being torpedoed, they opened fire and sank the sub, managing to rescue only two crew of what proved to be a minelayer. For their uniform gallantry the Victoria Cross was awarded to the whole of HMS Pargust. In another cliff-hanging chapter, Captain Carpenter gives his account of the celebrated attack on the Zeebrugge Mole, designed to divert attention from the simultaneous blowing up of a railway bridge by submarines and the deliberate sinking of blockships across the entrance to the canal. Rain and off-course smokescreens impeded progress but that gave even more of an element of surprise when Vindictive reached the Mole. The resulting bombardment resulted in the deaths of many brave men but the heroic action on the viaduct is a breathtaking story. In the thick of Gallipoli the novelist Compton Mackenzie recounts an unexpected meeting with a fan, the second battle of Ypres is described by one of the pilots providing air cover, while a commander at the battle of Jutland describes with unsparing realism the psychological realities of close fighting. 168pp, paperback, photos.