Dorling, Henry Taprell Arctic Convoy
World War 2 convoy operations from a Royal Navy Home Fleet perspective, with an emphasis on Murmansk Run convoys to Russia. North Atlantic and Malta convoys also figure into the novel. The novel’s dust jacket blurb notes:
“The story of the Arctic Convoys is one of hardihood and endurance of all who took part in what has been described as one of the worst runs in the war. This book is a story, based on fact, as seen through the eyes of a young officer [Lieut. John Jaspar Sattherwaite Rust] who took part in them in a destroyer, of the convoys to North Russia which started in August 1941 and continued until the end of the war in Europe.”
Taffrail’s own brief foreword is even more instructive:
“This book is more fact than fiction. Apart from some personal experience, I have referred to many sources, official and otherwise. Though the chief characters and their ships exist only in my imagination, I do not think I have described any action or incident which is either exaggerated or untrue.”
Though Taffrail’s prose is often wooden and surprisingly dispassionate, this device (probably unplanned by the author) actually serves to dramatically heighten the novel’s effect on the modern-day reader. Of particular interest are his descriptions of the generally unhappy fates met by real, named individual merchant vessels being escorted in convoy by Lieut. Rust’s destroyer through a succession of attacking German U-boats, bombers and attack planes. Also of note is Taffrail’s’s bitter feelings towards Britain’s erstwhile wartime ally Russia; he depicts the Russians as churlish at best, never truly grateful for the sacrifices made by thousands of Allied merchant seamen and sailors whose dedication kept the Arctic convoys running and ensured that Russia would receive the materials it needed to help fight Nazi Germany.