Book description
An anthology of personal experience selected and edited by John Winton.
The Second World War produced hundreds of actions and incidents at
sea which were packed with drama and suspense, and which evoked the
greatest heroism. Here is a generous selection of personal experience
written by the men and women who were there: in the British and
Commonwealth Navies, the Fleet Air Arm, the Merchant Navy, or ashore.
Names which have passed into history - Narvik, Dunkirk, the River
Plate, the Bismarck, the Scharnhorst, Crete, Anzio, the
Battle of the Atlantic, the Russian convoys - all these and many
others are reflected in these gripping eyewitness testimonies.
This is the first volume in the unique Freedom's Battle
trilogy, which provides intensely vivid accounts of war at sea, in the
air and on land. Far better than any single narrative, the extracts
build up a complete picture of the War as it was experienced by the
men and women who actually fought in it.
John Winton joined the Royal Navy in 1949 as a cadet and retired in
1963 as a Lieutenant-Commander. He is widely known as a novelist and
historian of the sea. His books include the novels
A Drowning War
and
Aircraft Carrier
, and works of non-fiction such as
Find, Fix and Strike: The Fleet
Air Arm at War 1939-45
,
War in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay
,
Air Power at Sea 1939-1945
,
The Death of the 'Scharnhorst'
,
Ultra at Sea
and
Ultra in the Pacific
. He died in 2001.
