The St. Nazaire raid has not been covered in the detail warranted by its role in the evolution of special warfare tactics. James Dorrian has drawn on interviews with over 100 survivors, both British and German, to present this remarkable account. All aspects of the engagement are covered, including the final ironic incident that resulted in more German casualties than the main battle itself.
Bio
While we might live in a world whose advances in military technology seem ever more to encroach upon the realm of science fiction, my own interest remains firmly directed towards conflict's human dimension. Having been born into the bleakness and hardship of a post-WW11 United Kingdom missing so many thousands of husbands, brothers, uncles and sons, I am particularly curious about the social, physical and intellectual consequences of the involuntary transformation, in wartime, of a family-oriented civilian population into combatants whose actions and very existence become, at a stroke, the property of the state.
With regard to Operation CHARIOT, the Raid on Saint-Nazaire, I have, by delving deep within the nuts and bolts of one specific military event, sought to illustrate the unconscionable waste of energy, gift and youth, that is the inevitable consequence of our inability to live with one another in peace. Thanks to CHARIOT alone, Britain lost some of her very brightest and very best young men - a loss from which can be extrapolated the overwhelming folly of war in general as a solution to conflict. Surely our societies are not so overburdened with talent that we can afford to squander our most precious resource in enterprises whose only certain products are death and destruction.
On a more personal note, I am an Irish Canadian, currently resident in the UK. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1946, I graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, before marrying my wife, and best friend, Sandie, in 1968. Having always been interested in aviation, we moved to England where I worked for several years in the aircraft industry, initially at the old Vickers works at Brooklands and ultimately on the Concorde supersonic transport project at RAF Fairford - a WW11 American air base. In 1974 we moved to Canada - to Alberta in the first instance, then to Victoria, British Columbia (surely one of the most beautiful yet least known cities in the world). While working in Victoria as an illustrator, I started to write a novel the research for which led me to CHARIOT and a decade and a half of research during which I was privileged to meet, and interview at length, most of the then surviving 'Charioteers'.
