A Good Lesson to Learn

Last year, I found and re-read a book I remembered enjoying enormously as a kid. The Hostile Beaches turned out to be quite good. It was the second of six books about the war time adventures of two young sailors.

This made me want to read the rest of the series, but they've been out of print for years and used copies for most of this series run about $30.00 each. So--though I would like to one day own the entire series--I finally acquired the first book, The Cold Seas Beyond (1963), via interlibrary loan. I ended up with a copy owned by the University of Missouri--Kansas City.

This one is set in the Aleutian Islands, not long after several of the western-most islands are occupied by the Japanese. Bob Dunbar, our point-of-view character, is just out of high school and working on a civilian salvage ship named the Otter. They are now helping the military, delivering supplies and doing salvage work when necessary.

It's another great book and I'm looking forward to reading the others. This may drive our interlibrary loan library nuts trying to track down copies for me. But that's her job, by golly, and sometimes you just have to consider people expendable.

Anyway, I'm not going to give a detailed summary of the book because I want to talk about one particular scene that really impressed me, especially since this was a Juvenile novel (what we would today call a Young Adult novel). I'm afraid it involves a spoiler, but I really want to talk about this.

The Otter is sent out to salvage a PT boat that ran aground on a remote island. The crew of the PT boat has already been evacuated, but the Navy in the Aleutians are already short on resources, so they want the boat back if possible.

The Otter has quite an adventure on this job. The weather is horrible, making just approaching the rocky shore where the PT is stranded dangerous. When the crew decides that the boat can be salvaged, this requires back-breaking work in still horrible and freezing weather to patch up a hole and pump out sea water. Rigging the towline and getting the boat off the shore is also difficult, as is towing it through the very heavy seas.

Before they can get back to safe harbor, the towing line parts. There is heavy fog and the two crewmen who were aboard the PT boat find themselves alone, adrift and with no idea where they are. Then, when the fog clears, they are spotted by American planes. They don't have a working lamp with which to send a recognition signal, so the planes attack them. The PT boat is sunk and the crewmen are found and rescued by the Otter just in time to keep them from freezing to death in the bitterly cold sea.

So all that hard labor, danger and tension had been for nothing. It's only one incident in the ship's career and they have their share of victories--including a remarkable one at the novel's climax. But I couldn't be more impressed that this sequence is included in a book targeted at younger readers.  There is no guarantees in war--or in life in general. Sometimes, you'll do your best and, through no fault of your own or no fault of anyone (heck, the American planes acting properly in sinking a boat that didn't send the recognition signal), you will fail. When this happens, it is your responsibility to bounce back and try again.

Such a great lesson and exactly the sort of thing that should be in a Young Adult novel.