Fotografía de autor

Barry Wynne

Autor de Behind the mask of Tutankhamen

13 Obras 78 Miembros 2 Reseñas

Obras de Barry Wynne

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
1929
Género
male
Nacionalidad
UK
Lugar de nacimiento
England

Miembros

Reseñas

What or who directed me towards this book, I cannot recall. Fact is that I finished the 158 pages of this read in only a few hours during a long weekend.

The story recounts the terrible ordeal of seven inhabitants of the Cook archipelago who get lost at sea during a crossing between two neighbouring islands. Their boat, a tiny sloop, not longer than 16 foot, with a huge sail, is barely seaworthy on the open Ocean. That they, or at least some of them, manage to survive a drift of 2000 miles shows that the Ocean has kept its clement side, It is the lack of food and especially drinking water that kills the sailors slowly.

Written in 1966, I suspect the writer, Barry Wynne, to be a misionary or a preacher man of some kind. Much emphasis is laid upon the religiousness of the poor wretches. They are Seven Day Adventists who keep their sanity by praying continuously, give grace and implore God at each moment they find themselves in a dire situation. That is to say all the time.

At certain moments, their luck seems to be directed by Jehovah himself; like when a whole colony of squids wash aboard with a rogue wave. I wondered for a moment if it was a Polynesian version of Saint Brendan, I was reading.

While the survival is truely miraculous, the book has obviously been written as a religious pamphlet or a Sunday School morality play.

Awkwardly enough the writer regrets that these fishermen have become too civilised and have lost the navigating skills of their forefathers. Lost, during the "civilizing" work of the different Christian factions, I would think.

Still, the few pages describing the capsizing of their craft in the middle of the ocean and their herculean effort to right it again are of a nail-biting intensity and a disturbing realism.

When the poor blokes finally wash upon a desert beach, genuine living dead crawling towards the shade of the first palmtrees, you must be heartless if you won't get a lump in your throat.
… (más)
½
1 vota
Denunciada
Macumbeira | Nov 11, 2014 |
As D-Day approached, the Allies came up with deception plans to keep the Germans guessing where the invasion would come a shore. One of these plans came about when the OSS learned that a German female spy was headed for London. They set her to be the conduit to providing false information about a plan to invade through Holland. Hannie Herodsen was mislead so completely and made her reports to Germany so convincingly, that 1000's of German soldiers and 100's of tanks were moved to Holland and thus were not in Normandy when the Allies came ashore. The German High Command did not believe the Holland story but Hitler did and over ruled them. The introduction was provided by General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the man in charge of the OSS and the man who approved the plan when it was proposed. A great story that reads like fiction but Donovan claims it to be true.
I did feel badly for the American officer who was set up to be Hannie's lover and who fell for her completely and thus unwittingly provided her with the phony classified information and technically should have faced a court marshal but did not. As well, members of the Dutch Underground were purposely given the false information and then betrayed to the Gestapo who then tortured the information from them to make the Germans believe Hannie's information.
Since writing this review, I did limited research on Hannie and discovered that a search of German intelligence sources indicates no such person existed and a search of Allied sources suggests this entire operation never happen. Dutch sources can find no record of the Underground leaders who were supposedly sacrifice. For more on this including questions about Donovan's endorsement of the book, go to http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000607331/DOC_0000607331.pdf
… (más)
 
Denunciada
lamour | Jan 24, 2013 |

Estadísticas

Obras
13
Miembros
78
Popularidad
#229,022
Valoración
½ 3.3
Reseñas
2
ISBNs
15
Idiomas
3

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