Nick Everard, aboard the destroyer Harbinger, escorts a slow convoy through dangerous seas--the haunt of the ferocious U-boat packs, and the convoy is too vulnerable to pass up--at least that's what the Allies hope, for Everard and his ships are bait designed to distract the Germans from the real "Torch" invasion forces.
Alexander Fullerton (1924–2008) was a British author of naval and other fiction. Born in 1924 in Suffolk and brought up in France, he was a cadet during the years 1938-1941 at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth from the age of thirteen. He went to sea serving first in the battleship Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean, and spent the rest of the war at sea - mostly under it, in submarines.
Fullerton's first novel SURFACE! sold over 500,000 copies. Then he worked on the 9-volume Nicholas Everard series that made his reputation.
This series has followed Nick Everard and his family through two world wars. Nick is now Captain RN and in command of a destroyer escorting Atlantic convoy. Needless to say he is drawn into a subterfuge involving Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November 1942. The voyage has Nick and his crew fending off the attentions of a U-Boat pack. Meanwhile his son Paul is serving aboard a submarine on the Malta station involving secret agents and a part in the coastal landings. While this is going on Jack, having been capture during a commando attack, part of the last adventure A Share of Honour, is now a prisoner of war and not content with his lot. Has he now been caught with his trousers down?
These books are all good gung-ho boys own stuff and great reads for those that enjoys this action stuff. Only one more book in this series.
I read this as a one off book and that's not a good idea. It is part of a series about a family and the totally unlinked storylines of three brothers in the war are incongruous.
In this book 4 of this series we see Captain Everard task with the job of shepherding a convey of ships from Freetown to Gibraltar. He is given limited help, facing a pack of u-boats lead by a German ace from attacks on other convies. We see that Nick also has to lead knowing that his own wife maybe on one of the ships.
I have read many books dealing with the Pacific War, but very few books about the war in the Atlantic. This book gives you an idea as to what these men faced every day, until the entrance of the United States into the war. Britain as well as Russia were having a devil of a time fighting both the Germans and the weather.
Fullerton does it again...Nick Everard overcomes all odds.
When The Admiralty needs a tough man for the job, Captain Nick Everard fits the bill. Non- stop action from cover to cover in an exciting tale of convoy escort duty against seemingly insurmountable odds...you will not be disappointed.
Another well told tale in the series of destroyer novels by this author. One gets a real sense of what is must have been like to serve aboard these ships, escort convoys, and fight off lurking U boats.