Read in Slovenian under the title of Morja široka cesta (2 volumes).

The story follows an allied captain of a rescue ship during world war two, talks about the things he has seen and experienced on duty, the life such young men led during that time and the women he met and their sacrifice.

Subtitled Stella, Mary, Thalassa. ( )

I found a little treasure here late last year. This is an older novel from the early 50's. LT says it is in Ernest Hemingway's legacy library. Cool, I say.

This reads almost like two novels - the book has two parts - "War" and "Peace". It is a first-person narrative of the life and adventures of an unnamed Dutchman who has escaped occupied Holland and arrived in England "early in the war", as he says. Perhaps early 1941? I sensed a Hemingway style to some of this. The first part feels very much like a true to life war memoir. The Dutchman has sea experience, 8 years including on a harbor tugboat and not yet 30 years of age, and yet upon arrival in London he is commissioned and assigned as Captain to a much different sort of tug then he had known before, a sea rescue tugboat, and he is assigned to dangerous operations to go to sea and save ships that the Nazis have torpedoed. The U-boats lie in wait for rescue ships so that they can shoot at them also. Or else planes strafe the rescue boats. Our Captain's story covers his experiences that begin in southwest England in the heavily bombed Westport. There's a strange romantic twist to the story as well. The war does crazy things to people's emotions and the end of the first part of the novel is quite heartbreaking.

The book is slow paced, which suits me fine. There are a few gripping action scenes early in the novel with a palpable fear of death as well but mostly it is the actions of the people before and after the missions, in reaction. I think this style when done well lets you get a better view of characters and their surroundings. This is more about the effect of fear and war on people, rather than on the war itself. Our Dutchman quickly changes.

The second half of this story, "Peace," is much longer and covers the period after the Americans have entered the war for just a few pages and then jumps ahead to after the war. We then follow the Skipper and his search for meaning and personal peace. We see some of the characters after the war. Despite continuing characters the two parts of the novel have a very different sense about them, although I still get that Hemingway vibe here and there. Like soldiers after just about any war, life is different and not always easy. Some quickly adapt, some do not, some wonder just what they have fought for. The Skipper feels lost. He begins to reconnect and build a new life when he starts visiting some old shipmates to see what they have become, but it isn't satisfying. He seeks a different life around the French coast on the Mediterranean trying to find peace, and when we get to the end of the novel it feels like it is about to start another new story once again. Perhaps a personal peace can be found.

There is a poem near the start of the story that the Captain finds scribbled on the wall above his bunk:

There is an old belief
that on some distant shore
far from despair and grief
old friends shall meet once more.

As friends and companions fall away I found this especially poignant, both then and in real life now.

I looked up the author and found his obituary.

JAN DE HARTOG, 88, author and playwright, died on September 22, 2002, in Houston, Texas. He was born in 1914 in Haarlem, Holland, to a Calvinist minister and his wife, a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship. At the age of 10, Jan ran away to sea and became cabin boy on a fishing boat on the Zuyder Zee until his father had him brought home. Two years later he ran away to sea again, this time on a steamer to the Baltic, once more to be returned home. As a teenager, de Hartog attended Amsterdam Naval College until he was ejected with the words, "This school is not for pirates." He returned to sea on an ocean-going tug, and started writing. In 1940, "Hollands Glorie" was published just as the Germans invaded Holland and became enormously popular as a symbol of Dutch resistance. De Hartog himself joined the Dutch underground and helped smuggle Jewish babies into safe haven, but had to go into hiding in an old people's home in Amsterdam. While there, he wrote his famous play "The Fourposter"; the manuscript was hidden in the matron's linen closet until the war's end. De Hartog made a dramatic escape through Occupied Europe; he was shot in the legs while crossing the Pyrenees, en route to Gibraltar and a flight to England. An international writing career between the U.S.and Europe followed and he became well known both for his books about the sea and for his epic Quaker trilogy, "The Peaceable Kingdom" (for which he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature). Several of his books were turned into movies such as "The Key," with William Holden and Sophie Loren. Motivated by the spirit of the Quakers and his wife, Marjorie, de Hartog became as known for his activism as for his writing. While in Houston as a writer-in-residence at the University of Houston in 1962, Jan and Marjorie became aware of the horrific conditions at the old Jefferson Davis Hospital, which primarily served the black community. Aided by the local Quaker Meeting, they organized a brigade of trained volunteer orderlies and nurses' aides, and de Hartog wrote "The Hospital," which became an international sensation, and resulted in extensive reform. The de Hartogs continued to work as a team in both writing and service. They worked with the Quakers to bring to the U.S. children orphaned by the Vietnamese War, and themselves adopted two Korean sisters. The de Hartogs have lived in Houston since their return in the early '90s. De Hartog's final novel was "The Outer Buoy" (1994), in which his longstanding literary counterpart, Captain Harinxma, finally sails beyond the "outer buoy," the last buoy encountered before the open sea, de Hartog's vision for death. De Hartog once ministered in Quaker meeting about that vision, quoting a poem he saw scratched in a naval bunk in Bristol during the war: There is an old belief That on some distant shore Far from despair and grief Old friends shall meet once more. He is survived by his wife, Marjorie; his children Sylvia, Arnold, Nicholas, Catherine, Eva, and Julia, and 14 grandchildren.

After reading this I decided that my suspicion that the story here is likely based in part on true events in the author's life was a good guess, but is a heavily fictionalized account I'm sure, moreso than Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms." This isn't a quick read but I am very glad I read it and I will read more of de Hartog. ( )

An excellent novel about men at sea and the toll WWII took on the men who survived it. Most surprising, was de Hartog's vivid description of diving in the Mediterranean right after the war. The writing style is vivid and wonderful. Good stuff! ( )