Iwo, 26 Charlie by P.T. Deutermann

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on November 28, 2023

P.T. ‎Deutermann’s recent novels have been working their way through the Pacific War. This one showcases the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. The protagonist is Lee Bishop, a naval lieutenant assigned to a destroyer. His job is to communicate with spotters on the island and to translate the coordinates they provide into firing solutions. Being the military, information provided by spotters goes through layers of bureaucracy before orders to fire are finally given. The delay endangers Marines who need immediate support. Bishop comes up with a plan to replace multiple competing grids with a single grid. The plan will streamline the process and save American lives.

Unfortunately for Bishop, he is sent to Iwo Jima to explain and test his plan. He’s given the job of a spotter, a job that most Marines don’t survive for more than 24 hours before a sniper puts an end to their spotting. Three Marines who have become known as the Goon Squad are assigned to keep him alive. Bishop is a mere naval lieutenant and not a Marine, but they bond anyway. Bonding becomes easier after they repeatedly save each other’s lives.

Bishop proves that his idea is effective. It’s so effective that he’s repeatedly sent into the field on new missions. He saves countless lives by calling in strikes on Japanese positions, devising ways to get the right shells to land on the right targets.

The missions are harrowing. Nobody writes combat scenes with more voltage than Deutermann. If it is improbable that one man can do as much damage as Bishop causes, Deutermann sold me on believing in the possibility of unlikely heroism.

It’s amusing that Bishop reviles the Japanese because they use sneaky tactics and fight to the death as he finds sneaky ways to outfight the Japanese and praises Marines for fighting to the death. Such is the logic of war. I can’t fault Deutermann for portraying that logic as it appears to combatants.

Apart from holding widely shared opinions (like other soldiers and sailors in Deutermann’s recent novels, Bishop hates everything about the Japanese), Bishop doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s dutiful and friendly and brave, but he isn’t developed with the same depth as the protagonists in some of Deutermann’s other novels. To the extent that his personality comes through, Bishop reveals it in an epilog when we learn that he has not gotten over the trauma he endured on Iwo Jima. The epilog is genuinely moving. It also takes an honest look at the difficult cost-benefit value of crippling three divisions of Marines to capture a single island.

Even if Bishop is a bit bland, this novel doesn’t need to rely on characterization for its success. Deutermann excels at bringing the reader into a battlefield. The carnage of war, the relentless fear that an attack is imminent, the hope of survival, the odor of fuel and sweat and decaying bodies (and sulfur in the case of Iwo Jima), the deafening noise of artillery, all contribute to growing tension as the reader follows Bishop and hopes that, against all odds, he will complete his missions and survive intact. I don’t go out of my way to read war novels, but I am never disappointed by P.T. Deutermann’s stories about World War II.

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The Last Paladin by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 19, 2022

P.T. Deutermann writes novels about naval warfare during World War II. I’m a particular fan of his submarine stories. The Last Paladin is set on a destroyer escort rather than a submarine, but the shhip is tasked with sinking Japanese submarines. The story is loosely based on an actual ship.

Mariono de Tomasi relies on his Sicilian heritage to explain his single-minded quest for vengeance after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — an attack that nearly killed him and that took the lives of men under his command as Japanese airplanes strafed sailors who were swimming for their lives. Tomasi is the commanding officer of the USS Holland, a destroyer escort that is geared out for detecting and sinking submarines.

The CO’s executive officer is a bright young electrical engineer named Ephraim Enright. While Tomasi has experience, Enright is full of knowledge and good sense.

Having worked alongside the British to hunt German submarines in the Atlantic, the Holland is ordered to join the fleet in the Pacific. Tomasi’s arrival is delayed by circumstances beyond his control. The commodore running the show at Tulagi is displeased with Tomasi’s tardiness. The commodore is expecting 800 ships in the Pacific Fleet to show up and doesn’t have much use for the Holland. Tomasi receives ambiguous orders that amount to “get lost.” Tomasi decides to use his talent at hunting submarines to look for a rumored picket of Japanese subs that might be awaiting the arrival of the Pacific Fleet so that advance warning can be given to Japan.

Operating pretty much on its own, the Holland enjoys unprecedented success in locating and destroying Japanese submarines. The job almost feels too easy. Although the story moves quickly and is always interesting, the tension that Deutermann brings to his other novels is absent for much of The Last Paladin.

Deutermann redeems himself in the later chapters. The Holland is attacked by torpedoes and later by Japanese aircraft, giving the story the kind of suspense that makes me eager to read Deutermann’s novels.

Tomasi and Enright are a bit one-dimensional, but this isn’t a character driven novel. As was true in Deutermann’s last novel, the intense hatred and stereotyping of Japanese culture is discomforting. I recognize that people felt that way during the war, so Tomasi’s attitude is historically accurate even if it is cringeworthy. The stereotype of Sicilians as creatures of vengeance adds to the sense that Tomasi is not a particularly likable man. Still, he doesn’t pretend to be. And even unlikeable heroes can tell a good war story.

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The Hooligans by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 28, 2020

War novels are not a staple of my reading list. Unless, that is, they are written by P.T. Deutermann. While Deutermann is a skilled author of thrillers, he uses his suspense-building skills and his experience as a naval officer to good effect when he writes about World War II naval conflicts.

War novels often follow the path of earlier war novels, telling familiar stories of valor and bravery and self-sacrifice. All of that is present in The Hooligans, but Deutermann gives the story a fresh spin by making the main character a doctor. Lincoln Andersen had finished the third year of a seven-year surgical residence at Duke Medical School when he decided to enlist. His flat feet kept him out of the Army but, after Pearl Harbor, the Navy needed warm bodies.

The Navy teaches Andersen to salute and sends him to a base on the Solomon Islands, where he’s assigned to a field hospital to help with casualties the Navy suffered at Guadalcanal. Thanks to Andersen’s failure to complete his surgical residency, the “real” surgeons view him as a wannabe surgeon. Anderson is promptly reassigned as the squadron doctor for a group of P.T. boats. The squadron is known as the Hooligan Navy because the “real” Navy doesn’t have much use for P.T. boats. His commanding officer doubtless saw the assignment as a way to keep Andersen away from “real” field hospitals, but Andersen sees it as a chance to save lives.

Over the course of the novel, as soldiers and sailors battle the Japanese, Andersen teaches himself to be a trauma surgeon. He draws on his three years of residency and, when he doesn’t know what to do, has someone read him a field manual that explains the procedure as he’s performing it. He doesn’t save every life but he saves enough that he comes to be known, with a good bit of affection, as Superman.

Andersen tags along with the Hooligans for a couple of years as they make their way closer to Japan, eventually serving his last duty in the Philippines. He survives bombings and torpedo attacks while working himself beyond exhaustion as he strives to patch the wounded so they can be transported to a field hospital for more complete care. He also survives a military bureaucracy that threatens his career when “real” surgeons learn that he has been performing life-saving procedures for which, by their standards, he is unqualified. The sailors whose lives he stayed no doubt disagree.

Battle scenes are harrowing and all the more realistic because Andersen isn’t a combatant who strides bravely into battle. He’s a guy who steps up his game when he’s in over his head because nobody else is in a position to perform battlefield surgery. He overcomes a bit of self-doubt and an enormous amount of professional envy while doing his best to stay alive and help others. Andersen is a likable character because, while not needlessly humble, he isn’t full of himself.

Deutermann creates a detailed view of the various island locations in which Andersen finds himself. He explains the hardships faced by the forgotten Hooligans who have to raid other naval vessels to get the supplies they need. He introduces interesting and offbeat secondary characters, not all of them in the military. Some are fated to die, not always in battle. Beyond his ability to create atmosphere and convincing characters, Deutermann brings home the horrors of war and its impact on the soldiers, sailors, nurses, and doctors as they are wounded and watch others die, always knowing that death in war is a game of chance.

I can’t fault Deutermann for a feel-good ending because Andersen endures so much pain that he deserves a happy ending. Yet even the ending brings a reminder that nobody escapes war unscathed. While The Hooligans is a quick read because of its adrenalin-pumping nature, the novel’s attention to atmosphere and characterization raise it to a higher level than a typical war novel.

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The Iceman by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 21, 2018

I’m a sucker for submarine novels. I probably read them as I would a horror novel because I would be terrified to be in a submarine, particularly when torpedoes and depth charges are trying to sink it. I’ve rarely met a submarine novel I didn’t like, and I liked The Iceman more than most.

Malachai Stormes is a World War II submarine commander who has a well-deserved reputation for being aggressively crazy when it comes to killing Japanese soldiers and sailors. His insubordinate attitude doesn’t sit well with all of his superiors, but they let him slide as long as he keeps sinking enemy ships. His latest success earned him a promotion and a bigger sub in the Pacific. He takes command in Australia and is quickly dispatched to Guadalcanal with orders about torpedoes that the reader expects him to ignore. One of the book’s themes is the shoddy nature of American torpedo manufacturing and the tendency of submarine captains to ignore senseless orders that assure their torpedo use will be ineffective.

Malachai takes his sub, the Firefish, on a number of missions, sinking tankers and destroyers and shooting an occasional hole in an aircraft carrier. The missions are tense and exciting, as they should be in a submarine novel. Malachai is determined to be innovative, as he demonstrates (to his crew’s horror) by staying on the surface to attack tankers so that he can shoot them with the deck guns. He also has to deal with a nasty fire (never a good thing on a craft that is underwater and filled with explosives) and with a crisis at the novel’s end.

Apart from dazzling submarine warfare scenes, the novel builds interest through Malachai’s interactions with his superiors, his XO, and a woman in Perth. His superiors are unhappy with his willingness to criticize their orders, although they can’t do much about it given his record of success. His XO can’t handle Malachai’s bloodthirsty intensity, particularly when he sinks a Japanese seaplane and then orders the deaths of the survivors so that they can’t reveal their knowledge of the sub attack if they happen to be rescued. The woman in Perth, on the other hand, enjoys Malachai’s company despite his cold-hearted, controlling, and isolated nature.

The Iceman combines suspense with realistic images of war and a believable submarine captain who was damaged by life even before the war threatened to strip him of his remaining humanity. The love story holds no surprises, but it nicely balances the war story. I could complain about some scenes that might be a bit too predictable (has there ever been a fictional submarine captain who didn’t take his sub below its rated depth to test its true crush depth?), but frankly, I enjoyed every underwater scene, predictable or not. Thriller fans, war story fans, and particularly submarine fiction fans should get a kick out of The Iceman.

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