Destroyer Captain: Memoirs of the War at Sea, 1942-45

"Yes, I picked up a copy of Roger Hill’s memoir Destroyer Captain after reading Operation Pedestal . Hill was commanding officer of the destroyer HMS Ledbury during the operation and latterly the HMS Grenville and HMS Jervis. Hill never achieved rank above Lieutenant Commander, despite winning a Distinguished Service Order during Pedestal. He was simply too outspoken. But he was a superb commander of Destroyers. Hill describes Pedestal from his own viewpoint over three chapters and this is a great companion to Max Hastings book. As well as that, he narrates his spell operating in the English Channel before being once more posted to the Mediterranean, and finally an account of the Normandy landings in June, 1944. What is so different about Destroyer Captain is Hill’s honesty. He does not hold back that he suffered from dreadful nerves which he took great pains to hide from his fellow crew members. At times his nerves were so bad they made him physically sick, but only once he had made it back to his cabin, alone. The stress of command, keeping that stiff upper lip eventually caused a nervous breakdown. Most military memoirs do touch on the aspect of fear at some point. In general, it is the anticipation of action when fear manifests itself, only to dissipate once the combatant is actively involved. The officers had to demonstrate their resilience to fear as an example to the rest of the crew. For example, in Destroyer Man , former World War II destroyer captain Rear Admiral A. F. Pugsley writes: This time, as the bombs left, I knew they must fall amongst the destroyer screen. To my intense inner fury, as I waited for them to arrive, I found it almost impossible to stop my knees knocking and I prayed that no one was noticing it. When writing Hearts of Steel I found that the surgeon aboard HMS Nubian, my great-grandfathers ship, had written a paper on the morale of a ship’s company which circulated around the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet. An extract of this paper was included in The Anatomy of Courage , a study of the psychological effects of war by Winston Churchill ‘s private physician. One instance describes the effect of bombing on Nubian’s commanding officer, which is very similar to the experience that Roger Hill endured. But there are few published memoirs that openly describe the onset of nervous exhaustion and breakdown. Hill is quite unique in being so candid in this respect."