Destroyer Man

224 pages. Some endpaper discoloration. DJ is worn, torn, and chipped. The author was one of the Royal Navy's great commanders of small ships. This book is the story of an outstanding fighting sailor's war. His success as a leader in combined operations led to his appointment to command the naval side of the amphibious assault on the Dutch island of Walcheren, in which his landing craft gained imperishable fame. In the last month of the war. his force played a vital role, operating under extraordinary conditions in the canals, waterways, and estuaries of the Low Countries. This is a record of World War 2 as seen by through a destroyer man's eyes, It is essentially a picture of the war from an operational angle--from the point of view of the user of the weapons put into his hands by others. Donald George Frederick Wyville Macintyre DSO & Two Bars, DSC (26 January 1904 - 23 May 1981) was a Royal Navy officer during the Second World War and a successful convoy escort commander. Following the war, he was an author of numerous books on British naval history. Rear Admiral Anthony Follett Pugsley CB DSO (7 December 1901 - 17 July 1990) was a British naval officer. During the Second World War he served as a successful destroyer captain, landed the 3rd Canadian Division on D-Day, and planned and executed the amphibious landings on Walcheren during a critically important phase in the Battle of the Scheldt in late 1944. His early experiences as second-in-command of the gunboat HMS Widgeon on the river Yangtze from 1925 to 1927 are recorded in Pugsley's memoirs, Destroyer Man. At a particularly dangerous and lawless time in Chinese history, the upper Yangtze was ruled by warlords. An uneasy peace was kept by a British naval presence, and when one of the warlords held a number of British merchant seamen hostage, Pugsley received his first opportunity to distinguish himself in aiding in their rescue. On another occasion he prevented a Chinese mob from overrunning a British cantonment by leading a guard of four sailors with unloaded rifles, he himself armed only with a service cane, towards the mob which parted and melted away. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Pugsley, by now a commander, was captain of the destroyer HMS Javelin, and was mentioned in despatches for his ship's defence against enemy aircraft in the Norwegian Campaign. Javelin was also at the Evacuation of Dunkirk, where she evacuated some 1,400 troops before being withdrawn to form part of a special anti-invasion force. After Dunkirk, Javelin was ordered to join Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten's Fifth Destroyer Flotilla at Immingham. The flotilla was a force of J- and K-class destroyers, commanded by Mountbatten from, variously, his ship HMS Kelly, and the County Hotel at Immingham. As Javelin was the sole possessor in the flotilla of a radar set, Mountbatten often selected Javelin to be his temporary flotilla leader. On New Year's Eve 1942, Pugsley was promoted to captain, and to command of the 14th Destroyer Flotilla in HMS Jervis. He subsequently was appointed to command all the fleet destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean. Throughout the early part of 1943, his flotilla harried Axis shipping and engaged Italian naval surface ships.[2] Following the highly successful destruction of an Axis convoy off Sicily, he was awarded a Bar to his DSO and the Greek War Cross. n mid-July 1943, after four years almost continuously at sea, Pugsley was recalled to join the Combined Operations planning for D-Day at Cowes under Commodore John Hughes-Hallett. Pugsley was appointed to command one of the assault groups. Each landing force (there were originally three, two British and one American, although this was later increased to three British and two American) had a commodore or rear-admiral as naval commander and was subdivided into three assault groups each with a captain in command. Pugsley was given the frigate HMS Lawford as his headquarters ship for assault group J1, responsi.…