The Good Shepherd / Greyhound review.

Greetings illiterate strags

I've been continuing on the Submarine movie binge autism streak, and watched the 2020 movie Greyhound last week. When I discovered it was based on a book, I hightailed it to the nearest torrent.....I mean I hightailed it to the nearest totally legal bookstore not yet pillaged, and got me a copy of the 1955 book.

I also got an audiobook version, cuz i wanted to keep reading this week, and I had to go do surveying, and it's kind of hard to read a novel when you're driving 300km over potholes a day.

Also this book barely counts as a Submarine book, but also frick you.

Basically Good Shepherd is a historical fiction based on real events or actual real world situations, but with the main character and his exploits based on the amalgamated experiences of WW2 atlantic theatre Allied captains of destroyers (Anti-submarine specialist warships) during their brutal campaigns against Kraut U-boats, and their often forlorn and desperate attempts to protect civil and military cargo ships from being torpedoed, before they could deliver their vital supplies from USA to Bongland.

Sort of like an amalgamation character and missions, like those Biggles books, which followed the titular character Biggles, a Bong fighter-pilot who fought on the Western-Front of WW1 in the age of biplanes. Biggles' adventures in each novel was based upon real world happenings in the great war, but of course would never have happened to any singular pilot, though similar scenarios had in fact been recorded by numerous WW1 aviation veterans from which his amalgamated adeventures drew upon.

The same principle applies to our fictional protagonist, George Krause, who is a yank captain of the Destroyer Keeling, is thrust upon the responsibility of shepherding a civil convoy of 37 ships and commanding an escort battle group of 4 destroyers, across the U-boat infested Atlantic Ocean.

One of the main Themes of the book is the weight of responsibility, and our protagonist Krause, is under constant duress due to the supreme magnitude of the responsibility placed upon his shoulders. The timeframe of the novel is in 1942, just shortly after Burgerland had joined the war, consequently the US had to scramble to put battlefleets into the ocean, and men in them to command, thus at the beginning of the novel Captain Krause finds himself in the unenviable and awkward situation where he is an inexperienced commander placed in command of a Polish (Szrotmistrz), Bong and Canadian destroyer in his squad, all of whom had previously seen battle, while he himself is untested - and has only found himself into his seat of command due to a terminal shortage of high enough ranking senior personnel at the outbreak of the war (for the US). The Polish and British destroyer, and their captains, specifically had both been at war for 2 years by now.

In this specific convoy, which the novel follows across the Atlantic, in the 37 civil ships, and 4 destroyers there are over 3000 men under his direct command, including the 3 other destroyers of the other nationalities.

The novel explores how Kraus, though supremely competent and gifted, in his inexperience in battle, finds himself in difficult moments, and having to weight his options when giving orders to Junior captains that he feels may judge him badly, and he fears they might resent his seniority over them. He has to consider difficult decisions, like allowing the Polish/British destroyer to chase down possible U-boat sightings, hedged against the fuel-levels they need to preserve for the rest of the voyage - but to also keep in mind that restricting their attack may lead to them resenting him.

Throughout the voyage Kraus is placed in perpetually worsening and awkward moments where he has to make dramatic and quick decisions on which the lives of hundreds depend upon. Not only is he in command of his own vessel, but he also has to communicate with the civil convoy and give them orders for how to steer (zig-zagging to make themselves less easy for prospective torpedoes), as well as to command all the other destroyers in terms of what flank of the convoy they ought to shield, and what targets they must run down.

Few examples include Kraus having to make haunting decisions as to whether to halt to rescue a few dozen survivors from sunk ships, or to speed ahead to protect vulnerable ships unprotected from torpedo attacks - he has to weight the lives of a few dozen men in sight about to be burned alive in oil against the vulnerability of the most invaluable rescue vessel escorting the civil convoy and which is possibly worth a 1000 men by itself.

Kraus also has to temper his messages to his allies over Signaling by flashing light is carried out by using Morse Code, and when allied destroyers ask him for ammunition he has to politely let them down, because he has even less, or when he leaves behind a civilian cargo ship which had lagged behind the convoy, he has to abandon it to help protect a flank under imminent attack, and has to let the civil captain know that though he is fricking off he had driven the nearby german sub beneath the water, and "has confidence the ship will catch up" Kraus is haunted by how abandoned this captain must feel even as Kraus must weight the safety of 1 ship against 30.

Luckily this ship catches up to the convoy unmolested and Kraus feels unequal amounts of relief.

Other themes include the fallibility of early equipment and the reliability of subordinates. WW2 trailblazer technology like RADAR and SONAR were in their infancy during the time of 1942, and despite the popular view by many non-historians 80 years later, were brokenshit failing all the time. With the relatively primitive early versions of RADAR being especially vulnerable to weather, the book also explores how WW2 captains often had to make due with false, faulty or broken equipment, even under battlefield conditions, which as you guys can imagine put a catastrophic amount of strain on warships, and gave U-boats decisive edges in combat.

The yank RADAR equipment specifically was vulnerable to harsh weather conditions, and unlike Bongs, were not yet at their most sophisticated development so early in the war for the US.

For the Human parts, Kraus has to weight the competency of his subordinates constantly, like his preference of a specific SONAR operator which is very talented, but whom needs to sleep across shifts, and Kraus cannot just force a sailor to man his post end over end. He also has to decide whether to trust the eyes of his lookouts and whether to trust their judgements - because whether they had seen a periscope or oil slick in the tumultuous waters has effect upon his greater tactics.

And if they had fricked up - his resulting decision was a frick up too.

The novel also explores a great deal of religiosity - Kraus is devout and tries to find inspiration from the Bible constantly, and near every page is peppered with verses directly quoted, as our protagonist tries to find guidance for how he must behave under exceptional duress - should he save men calling for help in the water, at the expense of lagging behind the convoy and risking ever greater amounts of sunken vessels.

This is noteworthy cuz so many modern writings have Redditor type absolute contempt for Christianity in general that anything even positive is a strange surprise to me, even if it is as lukewarm positive as a man in dire straights using his belief for support.

In spite of all this shit our main guy goes through over the course of 2 and a half days voyage, in the intense combat between the Keeling (Kraus's ship) and multiple U-boats, with the Keeling eventually ends racking up multiple kills, and winning the absolute respect of his Allied destroyers, and his convoy .

AUDIOBOOK AND FILM:

The Audiobook is pretty charming, especially the 1980 one as it involves instruction on how to change cassettes, to replace cassettes back in order once finished, and how to mail it back to the audio-renting company! This original Audiobook took over 10 cassettes!!! Just to finish this 300 page novel.

All in all the book is pretty spectacular and follows the real world historic military conduct of nautical warfare as it occurred during the atlantic, 10/10.

The movie Greyhound which is also based upon this book, also follows the narrative relatively closely, and in normal circumstances I would have given the film a 10/10 rating for being so spectacular and because of Tom Hank's acting, and the realistic portrayal of destroyer and submarine combat.

OR I WOULD HAVE

You see in the fricking movie the Krauts mock and verbally harass the convoy and destroyer escort over the radio, and threatens them in the most fricking Comic Book villain manner possible. HOLLYWEIRD JUST COULD NOT HELP THEMSELVES

it's like the f@ggot executives just could not add a fricking scar and monocle to the krauts to indicate they were the Badguys and thus went full r-slur and cocaine mode

I'm not usually one to b-word about showing nazis in a disrespectful light or whatever, but this type of portrayal does more disservice to the heroes than the villains than you could think. In movies like We Were Soldiers or Firebase Gloria, the Viet Cong is displayed as competent, menacing and formidable - they are never caricatures or villainous for the sake of making the protagonists seem more heroic in comparison - this creates a sense of tension and raw realness, and even by showing their human side, the tragedy and banality of war is enhanced by these films.

With this cartoonish portrayal of the U-boat krauts, it completely strips a raw realness from the film, it reduces it down into an unintenional basic b-word propaganda poster - it is so tacky and of poor taste it just makes me cringe

Worse still, because U-boats would rarely ever break radio silence and the their real world captains were extremely ruthless and professional. The movie even had the inspired idea of having the Submarines be represented by whale singing sound cues, thus enhancing their presence like an ominous lovecraftian threat, similar to the Dunkirk movie in which the krauts had no visible moment on screen, but the threat of their presence were felt

Instead this is completely discarded by this fricking fricking fricking Hollyweird need to have yank popcorn guzzling mouthbreathers understand who the badguys are in these two tacky scenes where the krauts mock Greyhound that they are going to sink his flock

Which infuriates me even more, as the probable fricking reason they changed the protagonist Destroyer name from Keeling (in the book) to Greyhound (the film), was just to have this shitty scene what an astronomical waste

I'd go as far as saying these two scenes, reduced the movie from a 10/10 to fricking 7/10 at mostfor me personally

@nuclearshill