NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2010 N


45


As I was going to St Ives...


● Medal of Honor winner John Basilone (Jon Seda) leads his men during the assault on Iwo Jima, as recreated in The Pacifi c Picture: HBO No peace in The Pacifi c OK, WE’LL get the obvious out of


the way from the off. There’s no Royal Navy involvement in


The Pacific. This is how the Americans won the war in the Far East. The US Marine Corps to be precise. And if you can stomach that fact (and,


to be fair, this is not some triumphalist US flagwaver), then The Pacific (released this month on DVD £39.99/Blu-Ray £49.99) is nine hours of compelling television wartime drama (plus an hour or so of extras). As it’s produced by many of the team


behind Band of Brothers (now almost ten years old, amazingly) – indeed the blurb celebrates the fact that The Pacific hails from the same stable – comparisons with that great series are inevitable. And in that respect it does fall a little


short.


the first offensive US actions of the conflict – Guadalcanal – to the assaults on Okinawa


The Pacific chooses to follow the lives of three marines – Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge (both of whose memoirs provide much of the source material for the storyline) and John Basilone (winner of the American ‘VC’, the Medal of Honor) – rather than an entire company, as in Band of Brothers. Between them, the three saw action from


and Iwo Jima in 1945 (Basilone died during the attack on the latter). In focusing on these three, The Pacific


three central characters is as attractive as Richard Winters, the lynchpin (and narrator) of Band of Brothers. Robert Leckie was – on the evidence here – a rather moody character; nor does Sledge, who became a popular and warm-hearted biology professor post-war,


across particular well – perhaps it was the arrogance of youth. Of the triumvirate,


come


Basilone is by far the most ‘human’. He is a household name in the US (they still hold parades in his honour 65 years after his death) – the nearest equivalent in the UK might be VC winner Johnson Beharry. Unfortunately, Basilone drifts out of


ld


the series for quite a while (but he did get his leg over with Hollywood starlet Virginia Grey during a propaganda tour of


John the


does have a habit of flitting between them – different locations, different battles – which can make some episodes hard to follow. In addition, none of


the USA), leaving the less-likeable Sledge (played by Joe Mazzello) and Leckie (James Badge Dale) to bear the brunt of the war... and the brunt of the programme. Despite these shortcomings, The Pacific is the most impressive thing to appear on TV this year; there’s nothing remotely as ambitious produced by British television companies.


app no pro co


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The acting is first rate and the production values are more big than small screen. The Pacific is a much darker programme than Band of Brothers – due to the savage nature of the war in the Far East, which was considerably more brutal than the Western Front 1944-45.


depicted in Band of Brothers. The fighting on Guadalcanal (you’ll never forget the Japanese soldier who tries to take on an entire marine unit


That brutality is vividly demonstrated in battle scenes which outstrip anything


m F


d it d i B wh


brilliantly recreated here. So too is invasion of the island Peleliu; the


single-handedly) is


several minutes devoted to the amphibious assault are every bit as impressive as those


d


jaw-dropping opening scenes from Saving Private Ryan.


Pacific the headlines and plaudits. But strangely the most compelling episode is the brutally-honest one following Leckie’s mental breakdown. After more than a year’s fighting, the strain of battle took its toll. The young marine began to suffer from


Such spectacles are what have earned The


nocturnal enuresis – bedwetting – and was sent behind the lines for psychiatric treatment; there he discovers that many comrades have also cracked. It’s an episode which gets right to the dark heart of war in the Pacific. ■ We have five DVD boxsets of The Pacific to give away courtesy of HBO and Premier PR. To win tell us the codename of the Allied plan to invade the main Japanese islands at the end of World War 2 – a plan cancelled when Japan surrendered in the wake of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Entries must reach us by mid-day on


Friday December 3 2010. Send your


contact details – to pacific@navynews. co.uk or The Pacific Competition, Navy News, Leviathan Block, HMS Nelson, Portsmouth, PO1 3HH.


answer – including your When naval historians go to war...


University of Salford. The fi rst – an American academic – had just completed his magisterial From The Dreadnought to Scapa Flow which, in fi ve thick volumes, told the story of the Royal Navy from 1904 to 1919, a period Marder called the ‘the Fisher era’.


This had followed on an already impressive corpus of naval historiography,


Navy gunnery offi cer who, because of proven literary and analytical skills demonstrated in the Naval Review and an important report on the Bikini nuclear tests, was chosen by the Cabinet Offi ce to write The War at Sea, the offi cial account of the Royal Navy’s role in World War 2.


Roskill then moved on to a notable fi rst volume on Naval Policy Between the Wars and was


seminal book on British Naval policy from 1880-1905 published in 1940 and followed by works on Admirals Richmond and Fisher, based on their papers. Capt Roskill was a former Royal


starting with a


WHEN I began my career as a professional naval historian in 1971, the major names in the fi eld were Arthur Marder and Stephen Roskill, writes Prof


Eric Grove of the


The Grove Review


then diverted into the biography of Lord Hankey, that vital ‘man of secrets’ at the heart of British policymaking in the fi rst half of the 20th Century. The second book on inter-war policy, a slightly disappointing volume on the 1930s, came out in 1976. By this time open warfare had broken out between the two great men. The reason was a dispute over the use of the Hankey papers compounded by an agreement, in Roskill’s eyes at least, that Marder had promised not to trespass on his historical territory. The


controversy was the extent of Churchill’s interference in naval operations.


American worship of Churchill, argued that Churchill had not been guilty of this. Roskill, the Naval insider, argued the opposite. At the time I thought that Roskill had the better of the argument, and nothing


This appeared in four volumes, together with a shorter single volume summary, from 1954 to 1961.


new study of the controversy – Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder , Stephen Roskill and the Battle for Naval History by Barry Gough (Seaforth, £30 ISBN 978- 1848320772)– has changed that. Gough,


professor of history in Canada with a record of signifi cant writing in Canadian history and Anglo-


a distinguished in this Marder, with his central issues in the


Canadian maritime connections, is clearly a fan of Marder whose biography he began to write but who then decided to expand his study to a study of both men. His bias in favour of Marder shows through,


despite what I am sure were attempts to be more balanced. This may be no bad thing as Marder has tended to get something of a rough ride from the succeeding generation of naval historians. Prof Jon Sumida of the University of Maryland (interestingly, another American) began a revisionist attack on Marder’s orthodoxy at the end of the 1980s that has since become something of a new orthodoxy in itself. Roskill,


interviewees, although Sumida’s able colleague, Nicholas Lambert, does.


This is something of a disappointment as in many ways there is continuity between the Sumida/Marder controversy and the older confl ict. Indeed a new revisionism has begun against the new orthodoxy, which Gough does


list of however,


not cover at all, although he might agree with it.


previous generation of naval historians built up


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when quoting my work own work on R


Richmond for a co


conference, is


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encouraged this process. A little surprisingly, Gough only refers to this somewhat briefl y and indirectly. Prof Sumida’s name does not appear on his


rather naturally,


more uneasy relationship that developed between Marder and the Naval Historical Branch than Gough recounts. Moreover,


the evidence of Sir Eric Seal, Churchill’s principal secretary, as somehow conclusive in proving Roskill was wrong in his criticisms of the First Lord’s interference. Seal had a view but a strong pro- Churchill bias given his position must be taken into account. I certainly do not think Roskill thought that Seal’s evidence somehow proved his analysis wrong and that he was “terribly embarrassed by Seal’s revelation”. The book does also not engage


the author takes


informed that he has also ignored documents that demonstrate a rather


de


in h d


which the


The author has clearly swallowed Marder’s case for


critically as much as it might have with


Richmond, that most intelligent but also most diffi cult of naval offi cers, pr


up into a major fi gure. He misses out my more critical analysis wh


is perhaps indicative of Gough’s general approach. I have been


which Admiral


strengths as well as a potential weakness.


corresponded with many participants in the events he was recounting and analysing but I have always thought that, because of his real and laudable love for the Royal Navy and respect for its people, he could be rather uncritical of what he was given. Roskill, the insider, had a more mature view – although his own biases could show through also. Historians are nothing if not human.


I must declare a pro-Roskill bias as he was very nice to me as a budding naval historian when I pointed out a mistake in his 1977 book Churchill and the Admirals. I am of my generation in regarding Roskill as the sounder historian but there is a valid pro- Marder view that, as stated above, is beginning to mount a counter- attack.


contribution to this campaign and the production of a more balanced view. It is based on much research and it is well written. It should have had a rather longer epilogue but is a most worthy work nonetheless. If you want to understand the


This book provides an important


dramatis personae and dynamics of naval historical writing in the mid- to-late 20th Century you need to read this book – but do so critically, and more needs to be said.


HP BOOKFINDERS: Established professional service locating out of print titles on all subjects. No obligation or SAE required. Contact: Mosslaird, Brig O’ Turk, Callander, FK17 8HT Telephone/Fax: (01877) 376377 martin@hp-bookfinders.co.uk www.hp-bookfinders.co.uk


He explains how the historian one of Marder’s greatest


THE rocks of the Cornish coast have claimed many victims, some through negligence (Torrey Canyon), some through bad luck (HMS Warspite). That HMS Wave did not join the list of shipwrecks is thanks largely to a superhuman effort by sailors and the good folk of St Ives, who toiled for four days in the autumn of 1952 to save the stricken minesweeper. Built towards the tail end of


WW2, Wave’s minesweeping days were brief; shortly after the war’s end, she joined the Fishery Protection Squadron. She was still with the ‘cod


squad’ in September 1952 when she anchored off St Ives to ride out a storm.


In the small hours of the


last day of the month, with the tempest raging, the anchor gave way and the ship was driven ashore close to rocks at the southern end of the fishing port’s harbour. Bosun’s mate Eric Rice peered out of the starboard to see “a wall of rock with houses perched on top”.


Some of his shipmates were


later carried ashore by breeches buoy, aided by townsfolk, who gathered in large numbers to watch and assist. Wave’s story – and the four-day


salvage operation – is exhaustively recounted by Paul Moran (who witnessed the rescue) in Part of the Shore (St Ives Printing and Publishing, £14.99 ISBN 978-0- 94838499).


The author interviewed


surviving crew and St Ives’ residents and gathered scores of excellent images, dramatically showing how close HMS Wave came to disaster – and how the naval and fishing communities rallied to save her. Wave’s Commanding Officer and his bridge team were reprimanded for allowing their ship – and her crew – to be imperilled, verdicts which seem rather harsh as subsequent scientific investigation showed the anchor chains were badly flawed (the starboard one failed on the night of the storm, causing the near-disaster; the port one failed while Wave was being towed to Devonport).


Thanks to the efforts of all,


Wave was repaired and continued to serve the nation until the early 1960s.


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