Full Circle

This is the autobiographical account of nearly seven years in the wartime Royal Navy, the last three as Official Naval Reporter (Lieutenant RNVR) following four years on the Lower Deck as a stoker. John Gritten was the only ONR to land on a D-Day beach after his craft was holed. He filed reports on: a gun-toting German woman, allegedly firing on American troops (which prompted questions in Parliament); Hitler's secret weapons' attacks on Allied Normandy shipping (blue-pencilled by the Admiralty censors and recounted here for the first time); operations with Royal Marine Commandos in France, Holland and Burma; and with the British East Indies Fleet, including the liberation of Rangoon. By coincidence, Gritten was aboard the Tribal class destroyer HMS Afridi in 1940 when it was bombed and sunk in the evacuation from Namsos, Central Norway -- the Second World War's first Dunkirk -- and again aboard the Tribal Class Tartar, near-missed by a Japanese bomber shortly before the end of the war. That completed his 'full circle'.Other highlights include: an account of near-obliteration by 'friendly' rockets; the ordeal of HM Submarine Shakespeare; the sea rescue of prospective 'comforts' for the Japanese troops; and mind-searing descriptions by French and British survivors of what happened to their comrades when two destroyers were sent to the bottom by dive-bombers.