Ordeal Below Zero: The Heroic Story of the Arctic Convoys in World War II

by Georges Blond

From August 1941 convoys of merchant ships gathered in Scottish ports or at Reykjavik and crossed the Arctic Ocean carrying war materials and Red Cross supplies for the Russian cities of Murmansk and Archangel. Each voyage was a struggle for survival through treacherous seas, ice-packs, snowstorms, and the Arctic darkness. The sailors struggled against German bomber planes, U-Boats, and destroyers, as well as the battleship Tirpitz . To survive the sea crossing was just the beginning as they also had to survive the Arctic winter. Georges Blond recreates these voyages, and the heroism of the ships’ crews, through official documents, ships’ logs, and eye-witness testimony. He conveys the drama and feats of endurance that led Winston Churchill to describe the Arctic convoys as “the worst journey in the world.”

208 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

About the author

Georges Blond was a French writer. A prolific writer of mostly history but also other topics including fiction, Blond was also involved in far right political activity.

Reviews

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

True courage is rare and takes knowing the dangers you face to be genuine. There is no doubting the courage (even when paralysed with fear) of the men (and I think there were no women among these crews), the sailors (merchant and navy) who manned the North Atlantic convoys in World War II. The translation of Georges Bland's book from the French is calm, cool, deliberate in its English. I had to take long pauses between chapters because I was so affected by the matter-of-fact telling of men being torpedoed, bombed and drowning in freezing waters. The cover photo of the edition I read, shown above, will likely startle you as much as it did me, when you realise men were standing out in the weather that froze the ships, fighting off German assaults. No fictional film of the convoys has ever done the stories justice in the way that this book does.