Catto, Max Murphy's War

Catto's fast-reading novel is set off the coast of the Belgian Congo and in its Congo River delta during the final days of Nazi Germany, May 1-8, 1945 (May 8th being VE Day, the day in which Germany formally surrendered). The novel opens with a French hospital ship and an armed merchant cruiser (the fictitious DARWIN QUEEN - her back story is that she had served as an ocean liner o the San Francisco - Australian run in pre-War days) en route to Durban, South Africa. The ships are traveling together having lost their convoy (Convoy WAS 72, with "WAS" standing for "West Africa Slow") which had sailed some days previous out of the Gold Coast. The remaining German U-boat from a submarine wolf pack which had harassed the convoy all the way south from Dakar takes on and sinks the merchant cruiser and then, in an act which violated all rules of wartime engagement, torpedoes the hospital ship. The DARWIN QUEEN's sole survivor is a tough Aussie petty officer named Murphy, an over-sexed and violent man, who is rescued and taken to a small missionary medical station in the Congo River delta. He vows revenge on the submarine which had sunk the two Allied vessels. Fate brings the U-boat also to the delta (her captain knows that it's just a matter of days until Germany's surrender and he hopes to lie low until then). Almost singlehandedly Petty Officer Murphy tracks down, harasses and ultimately destroys the U-boat and many of her crew. Catto's descriptive passages concerning Convoy WAS-72 are of interest for their realistic depiction of equatorial convoy and merchant mariner life. Less realistic is Murphy's private war against the German U-boat, with much of his action almost cartoonish in terms of believability. The novel was turned into the Peter Yates directed movie "Murphy's War" in 1971. Actors included Peter O'Toole, Siân Phillips, Philippe Noiret and Horst Janson. For inexplicable reasons the screenplay changed the story's locale from Africa's Congo River delta to coastal Venezuela.