THE COLD SEA
ARCTIC CONVOY, by Taftrail; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 16/-. CoONnvoys catried to North Russia 428 million pounds worth of supplies. Britain alone sent 5218 tanks, 7411 aircraft, 4020 vehicles and more than 450 million rounds of ammunition, besides industrial plant and food valued at over 50 million. Of the four million tons sent from the U.K. and the US. during 1941-5, only 74% per cent was lost. Those are the cold facts, but the Arctic was the coldest fact of all. In the face of surface, submarine and high and low level air attack the Royal Navy lost two cruisers and 17 other ships, with 2055 officers and ratings. Many good accounts, official and unofficial, have been given of the 41 convoys, and Taffrail has now entered the field with all the facts dressed up in the bizarre uniform of fiction. It is odd that he should have done this: Taffrail commands a great deal of affectionate reSpect in the navy, and this>is certainly the best and most comprehensive picture of our efforts to keep faith with our ally. Why, then, has he chosen to
frame it badly as a novel? "My name is John Jasper Satterthwaite Rust, and I'd joined the R.N.V.R. as a midshipman in 1930. . ." Oh, dear, and all his relatives are admirals and commodores and the girl we mercifully lose to the enemy is High Army, and this silly officer is always asking his servant, A/B Swallow, what the ship is about to do, which gives rise to a great deal of lugubrious humour which Taffrail (never there himself) has for so long so fondly imagined as true lower deck talk, But apart from the awful snobbery and the genteelisms as patent as elas-tic-sided boots, Taffrail tells the whole stark story. As a sailor he knows what he is writing about. He sees the strategy, he evaluates the tactics, and he does not over-write the stolid heroism of it all. While there is sea there will always be ships. Both have had worse chroniclers than Commander
Tapprell-Dorling:
Denis
Glover
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 13
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347THE COLD SEA New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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