MEN AT WAR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 730, 10 July 1953, Page 13

MEN AT WAR

PROUD ECHO, by Ronald McKie; Angus and Robertson. Australian price, 17/6. |N the first _hour of the month of March, 1942, the Australian light cruiser Perth and the American heavy cruiser Houston were sunk by units of the Japanese Navy in Sunda Strait, the narrow western entrance to the Java Sea. Ten years later, Ronald McKie persuaded 10 survivors to tell the story of Perth’s last action, and of subsequent attempts to escape capture by

the Japanese. The result is a fragmentary account of the action itself, and a graphic story of the reactions of men under the stresses of shellfire and defeat and the struggle for survival in a hell of fuel-oil and water. It is the expected mixture of strength and weakness: of men who surrender their places on rafts to those more badly injured, and of those who fend off helpless comrades struggling in the water. But there is also the blessed humorist who abandons ship with a heavy pair of binoculars about his neck and the comment that they will’ "make a good hock when I get back to Sydney." The story loses in coherence by the method of telling, but it gains in realism by the spare, objective reporting of the individuals involved. It is not good history, but it is a gripping story of men at war. Appended to the book are official RAN and_ unofficial USN reports of the battle, as well as a roll of honour of the 353 men who died in battle and the 100 who perished in

Japanese hands.

A.

S.F.