Signalman Jones: Based on the Recollections of Geoffrey Holder-Jones

Parker, Tim

ISBN 10: 1906266212 / ISBN 13: 9781906266219

Edité par Seafarer Books, 2010

A propos de cet article

The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

N° de réf. du vendeur GOR003035503

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Signalman Jones: Based on the Recollections of Geoffrey Holder-Jones
• Éditeur: Seafarer Books
• Date de parution: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1906266212
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781906266219
• Reliure: Paperback
• État de l'article: Very Good

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

SIGNALMAN JONES: A BRIEF SYNOPSIS As a young man in Liverpool Jones is a keen observer of the Depression and its racial and religious tensions. But in 1933 Jones, rather a lonely man, finds purpose in life when he joins the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In 1939 Britain is once again at war and Jones, a signalman, is on board HMS Adventure when she is mined in the Thames Estuary. He remembers the horror of that night: the scream of an injured man and the ship listing to port as, in inky blackness, Jones struggles to get on deck. Events then move at a great pace. Jones receives the DSM for bravery and is commissioned at Lancing College, where he meets his future wife Gladys, before being drafted to Iceland to serve on HMS Wastwater. Jones recounts in vivid detail the great Battle of the Atlantic: survivors, their legs amputated because of frostbite; the sinking of the Hood; and the capture of a German U-Boat. Then a sudden change: at the express order of president Roosevelt Wastwater is sent to New York to help combat long-range U-Boats, and Jones and his colleagues enjoy the unimaginable freedom and luxury of the Big Apple. For the two following years Jones is promoted to command his own ship. He travels to the West Indies and Canada, and then suddenly he's ordered back to England and marries Gladys. The frantic period before D-Day sees Jones as a pilot for Portsmouth Harbour. Later, as captain of HMS Guardsman, he accepts the surrender of a U-boat. The War may be over but for Lieutenant-Commander Holder-Jones DSM DRD RNVR the story is far from finished. In 1980 there is a service at St Andrew's School, Hove, to mark the retirement of Mr Geoffrey Holder-Jones, headmaster, once a boy signalman.

Présentation de l'éditeur

In 1939, young English naval signalman Geoffrey Holder-Jones began his career by surviving a German mine attack in the Thames estuary. World War II took him as naval officer to Iceland, the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, and the United States. Commissioned as a naval officer and given command of his own ship, Jones then patrolled the waters off Canada and Newfoundland before returning to Britain in 1944. This true story, written on the basis of personal conversations and a scrapbook entrusted to the author 60 years after the war, illuminates one of the great achievements of the war the beating of the German U-boat blockade of the American coast by squadrons of Allied ships that were little more than motley collections of armed trawlers and whalers. With a sense of humor and decency that sustained him through the ordeals of convoy duty in the Arctic Ocean, Signalman Jones has related his story to Tim Parker with vivid observations and an eye for the absurd.