Townend, William Fifth Column Family.

Set in England (chiefly London) during the period just before the start of the war (Summer 1939) through the June 1940 fall of Norway to the Nazis and its immediate aftermath. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “fifth column” as “a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders.” The dictionary notes that the term is a relatively recent one (for an age old activity), and dates to the 1936 Spanish Civil War. Townsend’s aggregate protagonist is the Darris family, solidly middle class and more unwitting fifth columnists than anything else. Members include a widowed mother (father Darris had been a Royal Navy officer killed in action during the First World War) and her four young adult children (two still at university), three of whom profess pacifism. The fourth Darris, Duncan, is a patriotic ship’s officer in the merchant navy who sees the dangers of Naziism and is willing to fight for his country’s survival if necessary. Townend introduces a true fifth columnist in family friend Admitted, a pro-Bolshevik Communist who gathers and passes on vital British shipping movement information to Nazi agents (readers should recall that this work was written at about the time of the German-Soviet rapprochement). In what turns out to be the crucial event of the novel, Admitted, on the lam from British counter-intelligence, runs into Duncan in a small English port from whence Duncan’s ship is about to sail. The fifth columnist thinks nothing of turning over information on Duncan’s ship to Nazi handlers, and the convoy-less vessel is sunk in the North Sea with nearly all hands, including Admitted’s supposed friend Duncan. Duncan’s horrible death, described later in the tale by the ship’s sole survivor, causes grief to family and friends alike, and prompts his older brother to give up his pacifistic views and join the Royal Navy. Overall, Townsend’s prose is passionate and angry, particularly when dealing with the Darris family’s narcissistic younger children (who seem to personify a “me generation” that Townend finds particularly repugnant). Fifth Column Family additionally provides a very interesting look back at contemporary British attitudes on a variety of topics ranging from pacifism to the role of the British merchant marine, all framed within the time period of the 1939-1940 “phony war.”