Full Circle: Log of the Navy's No.1 Conscript

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.

Table of Contents:
Dedication Illustrations Preface FIRST TURN--Afridi Hooray and up she rises First of the first 500 Vain pursuit A month of mysteries Up 'The Smoke' Unhappy weeks SECOND TURN-Terra firma et trepida Humber watershed Change of course THIRD TURN-Wavy Navy 'Greatest 'op in history, Sir!' Mixed cargo Vive la France liberee! A costly assault FOURTH TURN-Bombs First Patrol Rum, Suicide and 'Butchery' Sibling rivalry Dracula unslaked Tribals again Postscript ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SOURCES GLOSSARY INDEX

About the Author :
Following a brief spell as a trainee reporter on the Daily Mail, John Gritten was called up under the Military Training Act of May 1939, ostensibly for six months training in the Royal Navy. This was the first time in the UK that conscription was introduced in peacetime. To acquire some of the publicity the Army's 'Militiamen' had monopolised since the call-up, the Admiralty decided to make Gritten 'RN Special Reservist No 1' so that he could write about it in his newspaper. Eighteen days later, however, war on Nazi Germany was declared and the 'six months' became almost seven years. After the war, Gritten resumed his career on national newspapers until 1978 when he began a ten-year stint editing London-based African news magazines. He is the author of A Musician Before his Time, a biography of Constantin Silvestri, principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the Sixties. Gritten initiated the placing of a war memorial in Namsos, Central Norway, the scene of the Second World War's first 'Dunkirk'. The memorial was unveiled by the UK ambassador in May 2000, sixty years after the event it commemorates and forty-three years after the French had established their memorial at the site. John Gritten lives with his concert pianist wife in London on top of a Second World War unexploded bomb.

Review :
"...superbly crafted by a talented writer." -- The Nautical Magazine. "This is a remarkable book." -- CCA Warship World. "...successfully relays the humour, gallantry and stoicism of war without any glorification..." -- Journal For Maritime Research, Greenwich. "...brilliantly chronicled, and written with great vividness and a disciplined emotion..." -- Geoffrey Goodman, British Journalism Review. "...a joy for any reader..." -- George Kieffer, Everyone's War. "...an atmospheric, often emotional, personal testimony..." -- Hull Daily Mail. "I particularly enjoyed reading the episodes of the Normandy invasion... it was exactly as it happened..." -- Harold Kirk, Royal Navy Signalman, a wounded survivor of the bombed destroyer HMS Afridi.