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Text: English, French (translation)
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A selfless cetacean raises issues of our own humanity,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Whale of the Victoria Cross (Hardcover)
It is quite unfortunate that only two books by Pierre Boulle are generally available in the U.S.: Bridge on the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes.
However, The Whale of The Victoria Cross shows how wonderfully fertile a writer's imagination can be. Boulle gives us a most unusual premise involving a naval battle and the critical involvement and influence of marine mammals.
I also recommend Ears of the Jungle by the same author -- a Vietnam War story told from the main character's perspective, who just happens to be a high level North Vietnamese strategist. Fabulous!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Fable about War and Nature,
By Acute Observer (By the Shore NJ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Whale of the Victoria Cross (Hardcover)
During the Falklands Islands War in 1982 Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, warned the British Navy that whales often looked like submarines on radar. Pierre Boulle took this comment and created an imaginative story. Sonar affects whales like an electric shock, they immediately flee in panic (Chapter 5). Would they beach themselves? There is a description how killer whales will attack and devour great blue whales. To "save the whales" you must destroy the orcas. One of the destroyers gets a signal from radar. It turns out to be a great marine mammal. Actually it was two whales, a male and a female, swimming so close as to be of one flesh. They were attacked by a pack of killer whales (orcas). The LCDR of the destroyer ordered his guns to fire on the orcas, saving the remaining female. But the Admiral of the fleet became upset. Should he take disciplinary action? They decide on a cover-up, a story that sounds plausible. [Is this an example of "saving face"?]
The blue whale cow swam alongside the destroyer that saved her life. The sailors considered her a mascot. Whales are attacked by all sorts of parasites. They came up with a plan to remove them. Later the whale repays them by locating a hidden danger. The men at sea in ships write home about this whale. A surprise attack by Argentine planes led to the destruction of one transport ship. One of those in the sea was the whaler, his efforts called forth the blue whale in a rescue attempt. Will more be rescued by this cetacean? [There were old legends about dolphins aiding humans at sea, such as in Pliny the Elder's "Natural History".] The Admiral plans to give a citation to this whale. Then the blue whale gives another example of its devotion to the sailors. What is the moral to this fable? The original title "La Baleine des Malouines" translates as the whale of the Falklands. This title seems designed to be sensational. Note those are forty millimeter antiaircraft guns (Chapter 9). The translation should be "animal-eating plants" (Part 2, Chapter 8).
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