Softly tread the brave [Unknown Binding]

Ivan Southall (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 293 pages
• Publisher: Angus and Robertson (1967)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0007J3QQE
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bomb-disposal heroes of World War II, February 28, 2011

By 

John Gough "John Gough - Deakin University" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Softly Tread the Brave (Hardcover)

Ivan Southall was an Australian pilot in Coastal Command, flying Short Sunderlands. As a highlight of his operational tour of duty, his plane sank a German U-Boat that was caught on the surface at night.
At the end of World War II, Southall returned to civilian life, resuming his interrupted attempts to become a published author.
He wrote several true-life books about the war, including "They Shall Not Pass Unseen", a version of the history of his squadron (Southall's last job in the RAF was to write the official squadron history), and "Bluey Truscott", the life of one of Australia's ace fighter pilots, who had served in England and at the heroic and desperate defence of Milne Bay, in New Guinea -- the first time the Japanese were defeated on land.
"Softly Tread the Brave" is another of these true-life stories.
It is utterly gripping, and shows Southall's sensitive prose (later used to brilliant effect in his prize-winning career as children's author -- one of Australia's best).
Two Australian volunteers were serving in the Royal Navy in Britain early in the war.
When the London Blitz began, the Luftwaffe started dropping massive naval mines: huge cylinders filled with explosive -- enough to demolish a city block, or blast a massive crater.
These mines were so heavy (about a ton, as I recall -- much larger than the ordinary bombs dropped by Luftwaffe bombers) they were dropped by a large parachute to slow their fall.
To intensify the damage to material and morale, the mines were equipped with timers, and booby-traps, so they would eventually detonate, and would blow up if an attempt was made to dismantle the detonator or defuse the mine.
Because these mines came from the German Navy, the attempt to defuse them was handed to brave men in the Royal Navy.
Southall's book describes the arduous and terrifying work, defusing these mines, carried out by these two Australians, Syme and Mould.
The first step in the nightmare of an attempted defusing was locating the mine. Sometimes it would crash into the middle of a multi-storey house. At other times it would bury itself, despite the slowing of the parachute, deep in the ground, where its explosive effect would be even stronger than at the surface.
The next step was to identify the kind of mine, and its visible parts, such as screw-in detonators and timers.
Then the defuser had to set about guessing how the booby-traps had been assesmbled, and what would trigger them, and, crucially, how to take them apart and disable the mechanism without accidentally triggering the mine.
Typically the booby-traps included magnetic sensors that would be triggered if steel tools were used to unscrew parts of the mine.
Usually the booby-trap included a trembler-mechanism that would detonate the mine if it was shaken too much.
What if the mine included a light-sensitive trigger ...?
Softly, softly, ...
Often the first challenge was to expose the mine, by digging around it, or by removing debris, without moving or bumping the mine.
Even when a booby-trap was successfully opened (using bronze tools), cutting the electric wires might trigger the detonation unless individual wires were correctly identified.
Without going into detail, here, Southall presents the nerve-wracking details, and back-breaking work of the defusers and their support teams, tackling mines that sometimes had booby-traps inside booby-traps, or that cunningly reversed a usual pattern of manufacture to bamboozle the defuser.
The nervous cost of this work was excruciating. The reader feels it all -- or something like it, at second-hand (fortunately).
Southall presents the whole story in fascinating, harrowing, vivid detail, at times like a detective mystery: a murder had not yet been committed, by a devilish and powerful weapon, but how was the brutal, perversely ingenious deed to be detected, dismantled, and prevented?
Highly recommended.
Southall's early adult books were given only a small print-run, and have not remained in print.
Fortunately, in his guise as children's author, he wrote a slightly shorter version of "Softly Tread the Brave, for young adult readers, under the title of "Seventeen Seconds" -- the time a disposal expert would have to run from a mine if the trigger were activated. Copies of this version of the story should be much more readily, and affordably available.
John Gough -- [e-mail]