Top Notch

I LOVE history, and I love travel, and when a book combines the two, it is usually a winner as far as I am concerned.

But is rare for any book, however good, to make me laugh out loud, but Lewen Weldon's Hard Lying: An Intelligence Officer On The Levantine Shore 1914-19 made me do just that.

Not a promising title, even if Hard Lying has a certain intriguing quality about it

Weldon won the Military Cross for his exploits, mainly concerned with patrolling the east Mediterranean while supervising the gathering of intelligence from behind Turkish lines.

A few extracts will give a flavour of the contents.

"We all turned out early, and not without at least one rather humorous incident. Just alongside my cabin, a lot of hammocks had been slung, in which were sleeping not only Bluejackets [sailors] but also some officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Of course, only the Bluejackets turned out on hearing the pipe, and the bos'n, coming along and seeing some men - sailors, as he thought - still lying in their hammocks began to sing out, 'Show a leg there: show a leg.' Seeing no response to his order, he got justly enraged, and, rushing up to the nearest occupied hammock, with another bellow of 'Show a leg,' he gave the unfortunate occupant a hard punch in the back. Whereupon a Marine, who happened to be standing near, called out, 'Look out: that's an officer.' The bos'n gave one horrified glance at the angry face of the Major whom he had punched - and fled."

That is on page 50 of my Eland edition, and another choice paragraph follows 10 pages later.

"There was a custom in the wardroom of tossing with dice for drinks. One evening some of us were doing this when the Admiral came in, and, after looking on for a bit through his eye-glass, turned to the Commander, and said: 'I have a sort of recollection, Jack, that there is some sort of regulation forbidding this.' 'Yes, sir,' replied the Commander, 'but we pay no attention to it in this ship,' and continued to toss."

There is a lot more in this vein, and a lot of much more serious stuff about close contact with the enemy.

The title, Hard Lying, refers, according to the author, to the Royal Navy custom of giving extra pay for hazardous service.

Weldon was one of those who survived such service, and had what contemporaries called "a good war," and he tells a good tale.