Barker, Ralph: Down in the Drink.

To crash or be shot down into the sea is a terrible experience. To escape to teil the tale is a rare and remarkable achievement. This is precisely what qualified air crews for membership of the ` Goldfish ` Club : they had come down ` in the drink ` and —miraculously—survived. Flight Lieutenant Barker here teils eight of their most dramatic and moving stories—stories which for heroism, endurance, and sheer` excitement are second to none that the last war provided. There was, for instance, the ferry crew who spent ten and a half days at sea, six of them without water ; they were reduced to drinking sea-water and finally their own urine, and were eventually rescued only when two of the men were on the verge of madness. Another story describes five days spent in a dinghy in the Bay of Biscay, while British and German aircraft and air-sea-rescue launches competed in a fantastic race which ended in the rescue of the ditched crew, but at a cost of seventeen British lives : seventeen to save seven. These are but two of the varied episodes— humorous as well as hair-raising—which Flight Lieutenant Barker re-creates with such vividness that we seem to be living through them ourselves : stories of men -irom all corners of the British Commonwealth fighting for survival against un-imaginable odds. No one, we feel sure, could read of their experiences without being stirred by the proof they give, once again, that there is no limit to human courage.