MUCH FIGHTING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 13

MUCH FIGHTING

SWIFTLY THEY STRUCK, the story of No. 4 Commando, by Murdoch C. McDougall; Odhams Press, through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd., New Zealand price 15/9. "T HER® is more fighting in this little book than in many war memoirs twice its size. The author’s troop of No. 4 Commando, of which he was a section commander and sniper officer, landed at Ouistreham in the first wave on D Day, captured a coast-defence battery, and was in action continuously for 82 days and nights holding a sector of 6 Airborne Division’s bridgehead over the River Orne. When the commando was relieved its losses represented more than its original strength; nine men were left of the troop’s original 63. It is hard to imagine the author as a sniper; he is six feet five and built in proportion; but even his strength was taxed by the commandos’ 90-pound rucksack and their strenuous training. He tells his troop’s story in straightforward, functional. prose, and makes the narrative even clearer with good maps and battle photographs. If in his descriptive writing he tries too hard and sometimes fails, he more than makes amends in his account of the landings in Normandy and at Flushing, in his descriptions of sniping patrols and night attacks and of enemy mortar bombardments planned to strain nerves and rob men of sleep. He makes good use also of the humour of the British soldier, laughing usually at a comrade in difficulties or at himself, and tells some amusing stories of the troop’s "characters" and their adven-

tures,

W.A.

G.