A Home on the Rolling Main

This WWII memoir of a Royal Navy Lieutenant offers a vivid account of maritime combat throughout the European Theater.

 


From first joining the Royal Navy in 1940 until the end of the campaign against Japan, Tony Ditcham was in the front line of the naval war. He served aboard the battlecruiser HMS Renown in the North Sea and Gibraltar. Serving on destroyers in most of the European theatres, he saw action against S-boats and aircraft off Britain's East Coast, on Arctic convoys to Russia, and eventually in a flotilla screening the Home Fleet.


 


During the Battle of the North Cape, Ditcham was one of the first men to actually see the German battleship Scharnhorst, and he vividly describes watching it sink from his position in the gun director of HMS Scorpion. Later his ship operated off the American beaches during D-Day, where two of her sister ships were sunk. En route to the Pacific Theater, his combat service ended with the surrender of Japan. Written with humor and colorful descriptive power, Ditcham's account of his incident-packed career is a classic of naval memoir literature.