The Cruel Sea
By Nicholas Monsarrat

Monsarrat's most famous novel was published in 1951 and would have been written while his own experience in the war was fresh, and probably raw. It is now seen as a classic and I understand why.

The author served on a naval escort in the North Atlantic during the Second World War, so has direct personal experience of the rigors he writes about. He forges a realistic, exciting and horrifying account of life on a warship. Things got very bad for Britain in the war until they finally started getting better.

It is very humbling to read of the terrible conditions, the suffering, tension and horror the men on these ships had to put up with. Pulled together from all across the world (British, Australian, Canadian etc.) and from all sorts of unlikely professions, they are dropped into a new world of conflict: war with the enemy, with the sea and with the elements. The worst of the ocean weather appears almost unbearable and, on top of this, the constant tension and terror of an unseen enemy, the hated U-Boat, picking off ships of the convoy by day and by night. The torpedoing and its aftermath will stay with me.

This book is grim in parts, but also very funny on occasion, especially the rest and re-fitting stop in New York. The crew discover that the Americans are just like us .. except when they aren't. A great novel of war and how people cope with it.