C.E. Lucas Phillips - Cockleshell Heroes

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Dated in the telling, but still an extraordinary story  

I first read Cockleshell Heroes in the mid-60s at the age of about 12 and loved it. The story has lasted very well, but the style of its telling has dated badly.

This is an extraordinary story of courage and sacrifice as a group of a dozen commandos trained for a raid on Bordeaux in 1942. They were launched from a submarine in small canoes off the coast and from there had to paddle through dangerous seas and for four days up-river in enemy territory to plant limpet mines on enemy ships. Then the plan was to make their way overland to Spain and thence back to Britain.

The story of the development of the idea and equipment, the training and the execution of the raid is fascinating and gripping, and one cannot help being in awe of the men who took part - many of whom did not survive. The reservations I have about this book are solely about the manner of its telling.

C.E. Lucas Phillips began to research and write this quite soon after the war and it was originally published in 1956. The language itself sometimes grates on a 21st-Century ear (“the Japs”, for example) but that is just how it was in Britain at least until the mid-60s. Similarly, I found the attitudes and assumptions about class and gender hard to take now, as was the often lazy stereotyping of other nationalities – but again, that’s just a reflection of prevailing attitudes of the time. The style is somewhat reminiscent of wartime propaganda and stirring Biggles-esque adventure books, so, for example, when they were actually on the mission Phillips writes “No longer were they in the nets; they were to face the bowing in the open field.” He isn’t shy of a hyperbolic phrase, either, and some of them now read rather like jokes from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue; “On the hinge of fate the door of freedom was swinging more widely open” is just one instance. I think the tone of the book is typified toward the end of the book where Phillips is describing the Special Boat Squadron (the naval equivalent of the SAS) and says “No more attractive life is open to young men with a spirit of adventure.”

All that said, I still found this to be largely an enthralling read. It’s an amazing story which has been very well researched and I can still recommend it as a record of a remarkable wartime feat by some extraordinarily courageous and skilled men.

(My thanks to Sapere Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)