HMS Ulysses, Maclean - A*

                                               This book is the 1955 debut novel of noted WWII storyteller Alistair Maclean. I believe that much of his later material, often made into movies, had a bit more emphasis on the fiction, whereas this is based on his real life experience as a seaman on the Murmansk run.  Less important than the Battle of the Atlantic or supplying the Royal Army in Africa and Europe, the convoys north were often comprised of rust buckets manned by men worn to exhaustion and in the most disagreeable weather imaginable--weather so horrific that no one ever changed and men slept fully dressed.  The novel concerns the Ulysses, a light cruiser with over 700 aboard. The wind, sea and cold faced by the crew assaulted the body and mind. The ship itself, coated in 300 tons of ice, was as numbed as the men aboard it. The convoy escort left Scapa Flow on a Monday morning and by Tuesday afternoon, off the coast of Iceland, half of their ships were so battered, that they were ordered home. "What nobody had any means of guessing, was that this howling gale was still only the deadly overture...At 22:30, the Ulysses crossed the Arctic Circle. The monster struck." They spent a night fighting towering seas, 10 degrees weather and 120 mph winds.  On Wednesday morning, the escorts met their convoy in the Norwegian Sea.  Twenty-four hours later, the subs took out an escort carrier. The following dawn, a wolf-pack sunk 6 of the 18 merchantmen, and a German cruiser, with a radar system immeasurably better than the Royal Navy had assumed they had, holed the Ulysses, taking out all of its radar capabilities. By Saturday, a mere 36 hours from the safety of the Kola peninsula, the convoy's thirty-six ships were reduced to twelve; they had fired their last depth charges. Despair, exhaustion, starvation and fear were the orders of the day. An attack by dive bombers hits the Ulysses with a bomb and one of the planes, a Focke-Wulf Condor crashed into the ship. About the only things working on the ship were the engines. All day and into the night the bombers kept coming after the defenseless convoy. Even a German surface marauder joined the fray. On Sunday, five ships entered the harbor at Murmansk.
                                            I believe this is one of the finest novels I have ever read. Each chapter, indeed almost each page, is superb in its telling of the hardships endured and the strength of the men enduring. I believe the dangers of a Arctic convoy will be seared in my memory for some time.  There is a description of men thrown into the freezing sea to be either drowned or incinerated in a blazing oil fire that could provoke nightmares. A lifeboat is found with all aboard frozen solid and still drifting; an eighteen-year-old floods a powder magazine knowing he can't escape with the bulkheads battered closed.  I am astounded at the excellence of the telling and the horror of this experience.