WH SMITH WELSH BOOK OF THE MONTH - First-hand accounts of the experiences of Welsh men and women serving in the Merchant Navy, the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm dockyards and naval bases. The book shows how much Churchill feared losing the war at sea, and examines the events that took place at Cardiff, Barry, and the Battle of the Atlantic. The mere fact that the stories are able to be related in such a vivid and accurate way shows how these events obviously had a huge impact on the lives of, for the most part, ordinary men and women, called on to do the extraordinary. The continuous strand of death, destruction and appalling living and working conditions at sea pervades the book, and as with all war accounts of this nature, it is incomprehensible to try to understand what seafarers went through. The intention to see major social convulsions through the eyes of those who have to do the actual work, the rescuing, and the killing, seems to me to be wholly admirable.'