Through Ice and Fire (Paperback)

On the Russian Arctic convoys in 1942, Leonard H. Thomas kept a secret notebook containing detailed observations of life aboard his ship, HMS Ulster Queen. They included intense recollections of hours spent at action stations in the engine room, keeping the ship going while under fire from both the skies above and waters below. He tells of how, while berthed for weeks at Archangelsk in northern Russia, he and his crewmates suffered from freezing conditions and an appalling lack of food, while the attitudes of the suspicious locals grew more and more hostile. In such trying circumstances, when morale was at its lowest ebb, it was the men's irrepressible sense of humour that kept them going.

Leonard's daughter Leona J. Thomas has collected and edited her father's postwar writings, based on his original notebooks, to form a gripping and poignant account of life on the Arctic convoys. Over eighty years on, this unique and wonderful memoir stands as a testament to the astonishing courage of the men who sailed through ice and fire to counter Nazi aggression.