Nevil Shute led a full, varied and active life in peace and war, which informed his work as a novelist. Shute was an aeronautical engineer with a successful business career in aviation, specifically airships. He flew his own plane to Australia after World War Two (to research On the Beach), and ultimately settled near Melbourne. Serving in the Royal Navy during the war, Shute worked on ‘secret projects’ which I’m willing to bet are not a million miles away from the events of this tale Most Secret.This is the story of a daring initiative to equip a French fishing boat, Genevieve, with a flamethrower, to wreak havoc on the Germans close to the coast of occupied France. Two features immediately struck me about this book: its authenticity and the masterly storytelling. The story feels real. It’s told from a back room perspective, where we learn the genesis of the operation; we see the bureaucratic interaction between the various services, specific organisations like Coastal Command and the individuals recruited to do the deeds. The marine craft are well described, their characteristics, operation and especially the weaponry deployed on them. The technical descriptions of the flamethrower are compelling, how it worked, how it would be fitted to the fishing vessel, how the oil and flame mix worked and the constituents of the devastating Worcester sauce oil.The other structural element which works well for me is the gradual unfolding of the story, layer by layer as each major character is introduced. Shute uses his central figure to tell the tale. This is Commander Martin, co-ordinating the mission from the back rooms of the Admiralty, but not actually part of the action. Apparently this is a device Shute used regularly. We meet Charles Simon, the Englishman who is just as much Frenchman, expert in ferro-concrete and a recreational sailor; Oliver Boden, son of a Bradford wool spinner, married to Marjorie, the daughter of his father’s business partner and the soul mate of his childhood, and expecting their first child. Oliver serves on anti-mine trawlers before joining the Genevieve; Michael Rhodes, a young scientist who comes up with the technical requirements for the flamethrower. He strikes up a tentative romance with a WREN driver, both shy people on unfamiliar ground. Finally, an older American merchant mariner, John Colvin, much married and divorced. Each has a back-story, which adds poignancy when events come to their conclusion.Shute adopts a retrospective approach to the action sequences, the actual operation itself: ‘this is what happened…’. A little hard to get used to at first. Why not locate the characters in the events as the action unfolds? Ultimately it does not matter, because the approach adds a realistic, documentary feel to the story, because you get observation and opinion as well as the facts. It is just as intriguing, to learn what has happened as opposed to what is happening.The operation is quite small scale, audacious and geographically vivid. The characters are convincing, some slightly more than others; the American is not quite as well drawn as Boden or Rhodes, with whom Shute perhaps was in more familiar territory, even though Shute would have known Americans serving in Britain. Their motivation is always convincing. The action scenes are tense and the tension remains throughout the lengthy periods during which several characters remain in occupied territory. At several points in the narrative the morality of using such a fearsome weapon, burning people to death, seems morally indefensible. The question is never fully decided, and ultimately the implied justification is that the enemy deserved no better. The raids do, however, have a galvanising effect on the local French population, which in fact was one motivations for the mission.(view spoiler)[This is a powerful story, best illustrated by a civilian casualty. Marjorie Boden has come down to London. She is caught in air raid:A sharp, bitter smell of smoke was blown to her. In sudden fear she raised her head and saw, arising from the ruins of the house next door, a tongue of flame. She stared at it dumbfounded. Then she realised it meant the end. In those last moments she was agonised by thoughts of Boden, and of their dependence on each other. She cried: “Oh Nolly dear, I’ve gone and let you down! Whatever will you do?” The smoke came pouring up the staircase well and gushed around her, products of combustion, stifling and merciful. In a few moments she lost consciousness. (p116)Later, Commander Martin talks with Michael Rhodes in his hospital bed after the Genevieve has been sunk:“I see,” I said. “What happened to Boden?”Rhodes said: “Oh he was killed.”"Did you see him killed?”"No sir.”"Was he the officer who was on the keel of the boat, firing with a tommy gun?”“Yes, sir. They were all talking about it in Douarnenez. He put out the searchlight. Jules was the man with him, sir.”“How do you know he was killed if you didn’t see it?”There was a pause. “He wanted to be killed,” Rhodes said. (p367) (hide spoiler)]
Love how the narrator is known to us as a minor character who interjects his thoughts and opinions from time to time. He seems like a delightful, stiff upper lip with a sentimental streak kind of fellow. Shute tells a story like he personally had it told to him and now he's passing it along.The story itself is not one of his best but it's likely that that old easy chair you always find yourself in is not the best piece of furniture you own. It's just so familiar and comfortable that it's where you feel at home.
What do You think about Most Secret (2002)?
A great read for people interested in WWII stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. In the middle of WWII, a group of unlikely young men come up with a plan to sail a Breton fishing boat that somehow ended up in England back to France. They plan to slip in with the fishing boats of Douarnenez under cover of night and destroy one or two of the German Raumboote that accompany the fishing fleet. Their secret weapon? A powerful flamethrower with a new and lethal fuel called "Worcestershire sauce". This book was written in 1945 and one should not look for subtlety in the description of the Nazis and the French. The former are all bad, the latter are all noble. Still, there is something appealing in the description of the odd mixture of superstitions, wishful thinking and outright mutiny that erupts in Brittany after the first Raumboot is destroyed by an inexplicable fire explosion. The book contains a lot of technical detail about sailing, navigation, flamethrowers, etc, but just as you begin to get tired of that, the author switches smoothly to some human detail that keeps you engaged. Nevil Shute is a master storyteller; you keep on reading to find out how these flawed but appealing characters will fare in the end.
—Ann
