LITTLE SHIP, BIG WAR: The Saga of DE343

by Edward Peary Stafford ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 1984

Anyone who ever yearned to serve aboard a navy ship, or wondered how a new ship and a raw crew became a fighting unit, will find the texture, the know-how, and the mystique conveyed in this log of the destroyer escort Abercrombie's WW II tour of duty. First Lieutenant Stafford (author later of The Big ""E"", The Far and the Deep), first saw the Abercrombie, in March 1944, as ""a mastless, gunless yellow hull,"" beside a dock in Orange, Texas. She is one of six new destroyer escorts under construction--""poor man's destroyers,"" as he later explains, designed ""to fill a B-squad role,"" and to be staffed overwhelmingly by reserve officers and sailors out of boot camp. It's characteristic that the explanation comes only later--after months of shakedown training at Bermuda and advanced training at Pearl Harbor, endless drills and special exercises, confrontations and escapades that become Abercrombie legend, a gradual mesh of temperaments and skills. The book's essence and propellant is detail: off Leyte Gulf, ""three pairs of concentric circles spaced thirty feet apart along a north-south axis"" (and the composition of each circle, the role of each class of ship); ""the beer that no search or inspection ever found,"" the off-hours coffee pot contrived of ammunition cans, the steam-iron toaster; the duty of censoring mail, ""prying into the men's most personal lives,"" and returning some letters to their envelopes ""in lacy tatters."" There will be brief, fierce action too; some crises, some personal quarrels; some beginnings and ends. But it's the ongoing life of the ship that most occupies Stafford--and its import. ""Thus for five days,"" in late 1945, ""the USS Abercrombie, late of Orange, Texas, manned out of the cities, small town, high schools, farms and factories of all America, watched over the Bungo Suido, gateway to the vitals of Japan."" Total immersion--the facts and the feelings.

Pub Date: July 27, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION