THE SURVIVOR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 14

THE SURVIVOR

ADVENTURE GLORIOUS, by Ronald Healiss; Frederick Muller, English price 8/6. T is war, and the _ aircraft-carrier Glorious goes down, her flight deck cluttered with land-based Hurricanes, her medium guns impotent against the surprise salvoes of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In the retreat from Norway she has an escort of two destroyers only. The Scharnhorst out of action for six months is, in terms of war, well worth two destroyers: but not a carrier and over 2000 men. Adventure Glorious is by a Royal Marine who was one of fewer than 40 survivors. It is a personal and at first rather self-conscious lower-deck narrative, with the accent on the boisterous concern and unconcern of shipmates, end trivialities that are prelude to tragedy. For Healiss soon found himself very much alone, and in the icy water. When all survivors in the boat he swam to had died of exposure, he was alone again. After too many hours crazily he swam for a Carley float where a huddle4 group still lived. One by one they died, of cold, hunger. thirst. Only two were left when the float was picked up by a Norwegian trawler. The plain story of four nights and four davs of agonising coma does not make pretty reading. There are no heroes, only a great wonder, and pity. Healiss simply puts down his miraculous survival to an act of God. "Nature’s affinity with. salt seems to preserve life, provided you can withstand the extreme cold of the Arctic, and that’s where being fat helped. It’s the way my Maker made me." But the sea takes fat men. too.

Denis

Glover