Operation Sea Lion by Peter Fleming: 2003 Paperback

Author: Peter Fleming

Publisher: 2003, Pan

Pagination: 333

Format: Paperback

Condition: Very good, with shelf wear. See pictures.

This is the second Peter Fleming book I have read; see my review of The Siege at Peking. The thing about this book is that you have to be keen on British history with its ‘muddling-through’ characteristics (courageous in themselves), against the ruthless German war machine: it having just walked through Poland, the Low Countries and witnessed the collapse of France. It is the details of improvisation – humour even – as well as the honourable roll of the Home Guard, that gives the story some poignancy. What I like is Fleming’s use of language. Two quick examples: ‘…here again…we find the flinty soil of fact bearing a crop of legend’. Later, ‘…the fact that so ludicrous an expedient should have been thought worth testing by a government agency illustrates the pathetic eagerness with which the British cast about them for some means of doing their enemy mischief if he came among them’ (respectively, on page 210 and 211). Extraordinarily, both sentences began with ‘But’. My Scottish primary education drummed into me that you never start a sentence with a conjunction (and indeed, that you never have ‘and’ and ‘but’ in the same sentence)!
One underlying theme is the heroism and skill of the Royal Navy. ‘Only in one instance was the Royal Navy thwarted. At St Valery, on which 51 (Highland) Division fell back when the French Army of which it formed a part began to disintegrate, fog prevented the small ships and destroyers which had been assembled from entering the harbor on the night of 10 June. On the next day the French general surrendered. The Highlanders took no notice of this and went on fighting; but the odds were too great and in the end they too had to lay down their arms, 6,000 officers and men being taken prisoner – “the only instance in this campaign [the official historian points out] where a considerable body of British troops fell back to the sea but could not be rescued.”’ (p.155).
This is not an adventure story, unlike The Siege at Peking so the reader must persevere for different reasons. It remains a story worth remembering!  (Amazon review)