INTO ENEMY WATERS

A rare surviving World War II frogman tells his story.

Journalist Dubbins presents a text based on his interviews with George Morgan (b. 1927). During the war, his unit suffered more than 50% casualties clearing obstacles before the 1944 landing at Omaha Beach. Morgan belonged to the newly formed Underwater Demolition Team, led by the book’s other principal, Draper Kauffman. Son of an admiral and fiercely adventurous, Kauffman was denied a Navy commission due to poor vision. In 1940, he traveled to France as an ambulance driver during the German invasion. He was captured and released, whereupon he joined the Royal Navy and volunteered for its bomb disposal teams. A month before Pearl Harbor, he returned to Washington, D.C., to “launch the US Navy’s first-ever Bomb Disposal School.” In 1943, the Navy knew that Germany was constructing obstacles along the coastline. Searching for an explosives expert, Navy officials settled on Kauffman, ordering him to form an elite unit that would reconnoiter enemy beaches and demolish obstacles. Readers will enjoy the author’s descriptions of the fast-paced action that followed, as Kauffman, Morgan, and the rest of the team commandeered facilities, recruited men, and designed a brutal program featuring exhaustive conditioning and extensive training in weapons, explosives, and teamwork. That training regime was an important predecessor to what the SEALs would develop 20 years later. Dubbins fills the book with energetic accounts of the unit’s operations, including the earliest, Normandy, which was very much a learning experience. The unit found greater success in later operations in the Pacific theater, where the Japanese built few obstacles. Approaching in rubber boats and often under fire, Morgan and his comrades searched for mines, measured water depths, checked beach defenses, and labeled clear paths for landing boats to follow through reefs and shallows. As a result, America’s island landings became so efficient that the Japanese stopped defending beaches, preferring to retire inland to dig in and fight.

A compelling narrative full of World War II fireworks.