They Have No Graves as Yet
I attended a lecture on the wartime service of Lieutenant Commander John Bridge, GC GM & Bar RNVR, and was immediately awestruck by the man’s incredible, cool courage as a mine disposal officer. I was determined that the story of the brave men of the Royal Navy’s Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) teams should be brought to a wider audience. These men faced suicidal risks in tackling the menace of the German parachute-dropped magnetic and acoustic mines dropped on our cities and dockyards. During my research, I read the two autobiographies of Captain Ashe Lincoln KBE QC RNVR, concerning his service as an underwater weapons intelligence officer and decided to combine the two stories in one novel. This is the first of my Death to Touch trilogy.
Hitler has deployed a secret weapon to knock Britain out of WW2. Ships are mysteriously sinking at an alarming rate. Britain’s maritime trade is at a standstill. Unless the Royal Navy discovers the cause, Britain will lose the war within six weeks!
Aristocratic former barrister, Lieutenant ‘Monty’ Montcalm, discovers that the Luftwaffe is dropping a new type of magnetic mine by parachute. When the Navy develops countermeasures, Germany starts dropping these gigantic mines on cities to create terror, death and destruction. Again, it falls to the Navy to counter the menace and Stephen Cunningham, a working-class pacifist and stuttering physics teacher answers the call to risk life and limb to become a Rendering Mines Safe Officer. But the Germans are not prepared to allow the likes of Monty and Stephen to foil their campaign. Their technicians devise a cunning plan – to kill the mine disposal officers and their scientist colleagues!
“Shaun Lewis captures the very essence of the incredible men who took on the deadly threat posed by the magnetic sea mine and explains in detail the challenges they faced throughout WWII in this hugely entertaining novel.”
Paddy McAlpine CBE
Rear Admiral (Retired)
Formerly the Royal Navy’s most senior Minewarfare and Clearance Diving Officer