C. S. Forester's “THE GOOD SHEPHERD”
Book Review by Dennis D. McDonald
This novel describes four days in the treacherous North Atlantic from the perspective of a US Navy captain charged with commanding 5 escort ships protecting a 40-ship convoy from the US to England during WWII. The goal: prevent convoy losses caused by German U-boat attacks. The tools: human lookouts, primitive radar and sonar, military discipline, and the ability to remain awake and alert for days at a time.
The captain must make constant split second decisions in order to effectively track elusive submarines that often boil down to a choice between “left rudder” and “right rudder” in the pursuit of the usually silent and invisible enemy, all the while maintaining control of the other escorts and avoiding ship to ship collisions.
The captain must constantly calculate the probability of where the submarines are headed given fragmentary information about range, speed, and depth. Of major import: guess the enemy’s correct speed and direction so as to cross paths with the submerged enemy in order to fire depth charges from the ship’s steadily dwindling supply. The frequency with which such decisions must be made is nerve wracking. The author is relentless in detailing the constantly shifting tedium, fatigue, and terror.
We’re told just enough about the captain to know that he is a career officer with a less than distinguished record who has been pressed into command because, well, captains were needed as the war ramped up and the need to supply England became a national priority.
Does the captain “succeed” despite mistakes, bad guesses, and inevitable losses to the convoy? That’s a legitimate question to ask but is much less important, in my opinion, than just reading the book to find out what it was like to experience the Battle of the Atlantic.
Review copyright (c) 2020 by Dennis D. McDonald
