Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons (Bluejacket Books) Kindle Edition

This book would seem an unlikely choice for a woman of a certain age who's never seen one nanosecond of combat, but.... I read Walter Lord's A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic, and I know how well he wrote non-fiction. I've also watched movies like South Pacific and In Harm's Way which touch lightly on the usefulness of the coastwatchers. Finally, my grandfather served in the US Navy in the South Pacific during World War II, and in reading military history about this time and place, I understand why he came home with nightmares.Walter Lord's book shows why the Solomon Islands were crucial territory during the war, and the explanation of how the coastwatchers were formed and what these people went through is excellent. The coastwatchers' emblem was the peace-loving Ferdinand the Bull; they were supposed to observe and pass along information, they were not to fight. But this self-reliant group of independent thinkers knew that there are times when one has to think outside the box.What these people went through runs the gamut of H's from hair-raising to humorous to heart-warming. Lord's non-fiction reads like fiction because he knew that what's important is people, not dates. Readers learn about a priest who was ordered to evacuate but managed to avoid leaving and of a nurse doing valuable work with the coastwatchers who couldn't escape her own evacuation orders. Readers learn about a young Navy lieutenant named John F. Kennedy and of the more than one hundred pilots the coastwatchers saved. And who could forget the submarine torpedo room turned into a nursery for evacuees and the ten-month-old baby who wouldn't stop crying unless he was being held by a burly bearded torpedoman named Phillips?The coastwatchers worked among natives who could be friends one day and enemies the next. They had to remain hidden from Japanese soldiers who were constantly searching for them. They often had to move from one hiding place to another at very short notice, and they couldn't leave behind their radios (which weighed hundreds of pounds). Moving by stealth in thick, wet jungle and mountainous terrain-- often with injured pilots-- was brutal, exhausting work.Lonely Vigil brings the work of these men to life. It's an important chapter in the history of World War II that will stay with me for a long, long time.

I have now read four books about the coastwatchers: Lonely Vigil (by Walter Lord), Alone on Guadalcanal (by Martin Clemens), The Coast Watchers (by Eric Feldt), and Coast Watching in WWII (A.B. Feur).If you would like to learn about how the coastwatcher organization aided the fight against Japan in the South Pacific, the most comprehensive book is The Coast Watchers. This book was written by the man who set up and managed the coastwatcher organization (codename Ferdinand) from 1939 until early 1943 (when he stepped down after suffering a heart attack), and was the first book on the coastwatchers published after WWII (the first edition coming out in 1946).Lonely Vigil covers much but not all of the same ground as The Coast Watchers, but goes into greater detail and is a more enjoyable read. This does not mean The Coast Watchers was a bad read, just not as enjoyable as Lonely Vigil. This should not be surprising, since the author of Lonely Vigil (Walter Lord) is a highly accomplished author.Coast Watching in WWII (subtitle: Operations against the Japanese on the Solomon Islands, 1941-43) sounds as though it would offer a comprehensive review of coast watching operations during those year. In fact, this book covers only the coastwatching operations on Bougainville and neighboring Buka Island. This book is primarily the edited memories of two coastwatchers on Bougainville: Jack Read and Paul Mason). That should be interesting, but these accounts are stylistically dull by comparison with the Alone on Guadalcanal (discussed below) and Lonely Vigil, which is based on both written records and numerous interviews and recounts the same coastwatching tales on Bougainville in a more interesting fashion. In short, if a person has read Lonely Vigil (which was published about 20 years before this book), he could skip reading this book and miss little or nothing.If you want to get a feeling for what life as a coastwatcher was really like, Alone on Guadalcanal is the book for you, as it is a first-person account put together by a single author. The author, Martin Clemens, was a government official before the invasion by Japan, and so the book offers not only the perspective of a coastwatcher but also that of a (thoughtful) British colonial official who was trying to manage things on that end as well. As a government official, Martin Clemens kept a diary all during his time in the Solomon Islands and so he was able to do a great job recounting his days as a coastwatcher.Seeing that Alone on Guadalcanal was first published in 1998, one might well wonder just how much Martin Clemens could remember. In fact, as the author explains in the book's preface, the first draft of the book was written in the early 1950 but a final book never materialized because by that time there was already a great abundance of military books on the market and publishers did not have much interest in his story. It was only decades latter that a chance meeting between Martin Clemens and a US Marine veteran got the ball rolling again and eventually lead to the publication of the book by the Naval Institute Press. To make a long story short, even though the book wasn't published until 1998, the author actually did most of the writing in the early 1950s, when his memories were still relatively fresh.I'm very glad I read three out of these four books about the coastwatchers. As explained above, I found Coast Watching in WWII was not a worthwhile read in terms of content or style (but I read it to the end so I could be fair). In terms of good reading, I enjoyed the first-person perspective of Alone on Guadalcanal the most. Lonely Vigil was also a compelling read.

This is a wonderful and informative work on the Coastwatchers and their little known but vitally important contribution to victory in the Solomons in WWII. Those familiar with the Coastwatchers efforts might only still have limited knowledge of their successes. One would normally associate the Coastwatchers with a few people who signaled Japanese plane movements to the allies. This deeply researched document provides the reader with many more contributions that significantly contributed to victory in the Solomons. Not only did they warn of enemy aircraft, they also supplied vital information on troop and ship movements, rescued down fliers and sailors from sunken vessels, guided allied advanced forces through treacherous terrain, along with many other contributions. The book is rich in detail of the organization and makeup of the Coastwatchers and an excellent description of the various operations each Coastwatchers position employed and the successes and challenges they endured. These brave people wanted no recognition which is probably a key in why so little is known about them. I've sent a lot of time reading and studying the campaign in the Solomons and this opened up a new door for me.

This is such a well written masterpiece. It really transports you to the south seas island that were brutally governed by imperial japan.

To read about the exploits of those very brave coast workers.

Fascinating stories about people working deep behind enemy lines. Many of these people were civilians who had little if any military training, yet volunteered and placed themselves at extreme risk. Their actions were vital for success.

A fascinating book about a group of men who served under extreme difficulties to assist the American armed forces in the South Pacific during WW2.

Die "Coastwatcher" auf den Solomon-Inseln haben nicht unwesentlich zum allierten Erfolg in diesem Bereich beigetragen. In den einschlägigen Geschichtswerken werden sie aber eher am Rande erwähnt. Walter Lord, ein Historiker mit einem brillianten Erzählstil, berichtet in diesem Buch ausführlich über dieses im deutschen Sprachraum eher unbekannte Kapitel des 2. Weltkrieges. Natürlich sollte man schon recht gute Englischkenntnisse haben, aber wer sich mit diesem Teil der Geschichte beschäftigt, wird ohnehin auf angloamerikanische Literatur zurückgreifen müssen und hat daher entsprechende Vorkenntnisse. Einmal zur Hand genommen, möchte man gar nicht mehr aufhören zu lesen.