The Pride and the Anguish (Modern Naval Fiction Library) - Softcover

Reeman, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590137094 ISBN 13: 9781590137093

Verlag: McBooks Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Singapore, November, 1941 . . . They called it the "Gibraltar of the Far East"—a British rock that could not be taken. But suddenly, in a lightning blow, Singapore may be defeated. Call it incompetence or call it false pride—it doesn't really matter. Just as the warplanes of the Rising Sun take command of the skies. Lt. Ralph Trewin, who was a proud recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the gun boat HMS Porcupine. Is it too late to overcome the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore?

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Acclaimed as the foremost naval writer of the twentieth century, Douglas Reeman was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England in 1924. With the outbreak of World War Two, he joined the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen. He saw service in the North Sea and Arctic, and the Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns, beginning as a midshipman in destroyers and transferring later to motor torpedo boats. Following the war, he held a variety of jobs, including walking the beat in London's East End as a uniformed policeman and in the plain-clothes Criminal Investigation Department. He returned to active service during the Korean War, and remained a naval reservist while working as a children's welfare officer for the London County Council. In 1957, Douglas wrote the fictionalized version of "his war" more for his own satisfaction than out of any hope of publication. A Prayer for the Ship, was published in 1958, and was the beginning of a remarkable career. Ten years later, having established himself as one of the foremost modern sea-story writers of his time, Douglas returned to an earlier love, the ships and men of Nelson's day. For this series he chose the pseudonym Alexander Kent. In June of 1968, To Glory We Steer was published, and its hero, Richard Bolitho, was introduced to an enthusiastic readership. Today the exploits of Richard and Adam Bolitho are featured in twenty-eight novels, the lives and deaths of other men, equally heroic, in thirty-five Reeman novels. Kent and Reeman are published in fourteen languages around the world. More than twenty-three million copies have been sold.

Douglas Reeman served in the Royal Navy in the Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns during World War Two. He has written more than 30 novels under his own name as well as more than 20 novels featuring Richard and Adam Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.

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The Pride and the Anguish

By Douglas Reeman

McBooks Press, Inc.

Copyright © 1974 Douglas Reeman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59013-709-3

CHAPTER 1

The Flagship

The midday sun blazed relentlessly across Singapore's wide naval anchorage so that the lines of moored warships and auxiliaries seemed pinned to the sea's flat, glittering surface like models. Around and between the grey hulls there was an aimless but constant movement of other, stranger craft. Sampans and water-taxis, and tall weathered junks, reminders of another way of life which lay behind the haze-shrouded hills and the gleaming white buildings which crowded the waterfront.

The slow-moving taxi ground into bottom gear and climbed up a straight road away from the anchorage, its wheels spewing out yellow dust across the ever-changing procession of Malays, Chinese and Indians which grudgingly parted to allow the taxi through, and then closed ranks immediately in a seemingly endless throng of humanity.

The Sikh driver swung the wheel and jerked the taxi to a halt. "This is the place, sir." He stared incuriously at the square white building with its marine sentry and neat Malay policeman and reached out to open the door for his passenger.

Lieutenant Ralph Trewin winced as he stepped on to the road and felt the sun smash across his shoulders like an open furnace. He saw the helmeted marine watching him cautiously, and beneath his unblinking scrutiny he felt suddenly unclean and crumpled. He was wearing the same uniform in which he had stepped aboard the big troopship at Liverpool, and that too seemed to add to his sense of unreality. It was like part of the England he had left behind. The England of 1941, grey and grimly united at the end of a long summer of disasters and defeats.

He turned and shaded his eyes to peer down at the shimmering anchorage where some sturdy tugs were already nudging the same troopship into the fairway ready for her next trip. Out here, in the sunshine, surrounded by life and colour of another world, she looked alien, a reminder of the war Trewin had left behind. She was an old Shaw Savill liner, her tall sides shining in dazzle paint and streaked with rust and red lead from her new and harder usage. Trewin watched her backing between two anchored cruisers and then thrust her from his thoughts. That part of it was over. The long weeks in convoy, with each thrust of the screws carrying him further and further from the life and death he had come to understand so well. Even the stopping places seemed vague and distorted now. Through the Bay, with its high-crested rollers and the nerve-jarring crash of a torpedo in the night as a lagging freighter fell victim to one of the shadowing U-boats. Gibraltar, and a day of gaiety, the strange sights of well-lit shops, crowded streets, but hardly a woman to be seen. On and on, with ships joining and leaving the convoy like busy tradesmen. Freetown, where the battered little corvettes had handed over to an escort of lean destroyers. Simonstown, and, after a night of heavy drinking, on across the empty vastness of the Indian Ocean to Trincomalee, where the trooper had taken on another mass of soldiers en route for the final destination, Singapore.

Trewin paid the driver and turned hastily away as the taxi roared back down the hill, tooting noisily as it cleaved through the endless throng of people.

Trewin returned the marine's salute and walked through the gateway. There was a well-watered square of lawn upon which stood a painted signboard. It stated: "Rear-Admiral, East Coast Patrols." Beside it was a smaller board which said: "Tennis tournament tonight!"

He strode along a neat gravel drive, his uniform clinging to his body like another skin, his throat dry and craving for a drink. He still did not know what he was doing here. He had left England with a handful of other naval personnel, his orders clear and concise. He was to take command of an armed patrol launch, one of several which were being sent to Singapore to help in the work of preventing infiltration by saboteurs and arms-smugglers. But within a few minutes of the troopship's arrival he had been seized by a harassed lieutenant from naval headquarters and had been ordered here instead.

When he had pressed the officer for further details he had snapped, "Your launch never arrived, old boy. Nor did any of the others. The ship bringing them was torpedoed two days out of the U.K." He had smiled vaguely. "Curiously enough, their engines got here right on time in another ship." He had gone off, shaking his head, without a further word.

A marine orderly stepped from the shade and asked, "You'll be Mr. Trewin, sir?" His eye strayed to the wavy gold lace on his sleeve and his lips puckered slightly. "If you'll come this way, sir?"

Trewin followed the orderly through a long, cool corridor, past offices which for the most part seemed deserted and silent. He had not failed to note the expression on the marine's face. In point of fact, Trewin had already noticed how few reservists there seemed to be in Singapore. Like the war, they seemed apart and far away.

The marine opened a door and said curtly, "If you'll wait here."

Trewin walked to the window of the small waiting room and stared down across the square of green grass. He could see a few groups of white-uniformed officers walking away from the main building as if some silent signal had driven them from their hidden offices.

Another door opened, and a tall, tanned lieutenant in white drill gestured with a sheaf of papers. "In here, please." He waited until Trewin had followed him into the larger office and then said impatiently, "You're a bit late, Trewin, so I'll make it short." He leafed through some more papers and added, "You know about the change of orders, of course?"

"Only what I was told in the trooper. Does that mean I'll be going back to England now?"

The lieutenant stared at him. "Good Lord, no!" He glanced at his watch. "You've been passed on to us. A lot of our people have been sent away to other ships. We're getting a bit thin on the ground out here." He looked over Trewin's creased uniform. "Still, I expect you'll settle in all right." He handed Trewin a sealed envelope. "You're to report aboard the Porcupine immediately. It's all in the envelope, old boy." He reached under his desk and picked up a tennis racket. "Now I must dash. I've got to get in some practice."

Trewin stood his ground, feeling the tired anger throbbing behind his eyes like an old wound. "What is the Porcupine? And what am I supposed to do?"

The lieutenant glared. "You're to take over as first lieutenant." He walked deliberately to the door. "I'd have thought that as a reservist you'd have jumped at the job!"

Trewin had been carrying his raincoat across his shoulder, and very deliberately he let it fall across his arm. He saw the lieutenant's eye fall to the ribbon of the Distinguished Service Cross which had been hidden beneath the raincoat and then said calmly, "Thank you for telling me. Now don't let me detain you from your, er, duties." He walked past the officer and out into the sunlight.

The marine orderly was waiting for him. "I've laid on a car, sir. It'll take you straight down to the flagship right away."

Trewin turned guardedly. "Flagship?"

The marine nodded gravely. "Oh yes, sir. The Porcupine is the flagship of the squadron."

Trewin was still smarting from the lieutenant's rudeness and his own cheap revenge. "That'll make a change!"

He waited as the marine went to call the car's driver and then stared at himself in a tall...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McBooks Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1590137094
• ISBN 13: 9781590137093
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 324
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar