Hush! Most Secret! De-censoring a wartime memoir by Julia Jones
On the night of 12/13 April 1943 Lieutenant-Commander Robert Peverell Hichens, Senior Officer at HMS Beehive , the Coastal Forces base in Felixstowe, Suffolk, was at sea. He was leading a unit of four motor gunboats (MGBs) protecting motor launches (MLs) of the 51st Flotilla - also based at Felixstowe - who were mine-laying off the Dutch coast. When their job was done, the MLs returned to Felixstowe while the MGBs went on the hunt. They stalked and attacked an enemy trawler (an armed offensive war vessel, not some innocent fisherman) and a gun coaster. The waters off the Netherlands and France were, at that time, an essential supply route for the occupying German forces, therefore a regular conflict zone for the British Coastal Forces. Peter Scott gave these fierce, small scale fights a collective title, The Battle of the Narrow Seas. On this night ‘Hitch’ and his small group had silently manoeuvred up wind of the enemy vessels, then sped at them out of the darkness, engines...