Now it had come, Mallory knew. He looked at Andrea and Miller and Reynolds and Groves and knew that they knew it too. In their faces he could see very clearly reflected what lay at the very surface of his own mind, the explosive tension, the hair-trigger alertness straining to be translated into equally explosive action. Always it came, this moment of truth that stripped men bare and showed them for what they were. (p.118)

The plot

Of Maclean’s 28 novels, this is the only sequel. Immediately following the events of The Guns of Navarone, the surviving heroes – New Zealand mountaineer Captain Keith Mallory, American explosives expert ‘Dusty’ Miller – have only just come aboard a Royal Navy ship before they are despatched right back to Navarone to interrupt the wedding of the indomitable Greek partisan, Andrea Stavros, and take him to an airstrip from which they are collected and flown to Italy. So far, so preposterous.

Here, in Allied HQ Italy, ‘the splendidly piratical figure of Captain Jensen, RN, Chief of Allied Intelligence, Mediterranean’, tells them they are to have no rest but are to be parachuted into Yugoslavia, along with three hand-picked commandos, to link up with the anti-German partisans.

The strategic background is that the Allies are pinned down in Italy at the Monte Cassino line. If the Allies can foment trouble in Yugoslavia, the Germans will have to send divisions there, weakening the Italian line. ‘The whole future of the War is at stake’ – as usual. In particular, two German divisions have surrounded a force of some 7,000 partisans in an area called the Zenica Cage, to the west of the narrow gorge of the river Neretva.

Our heroes parachute into the mountains near the Zenica Cage. They are met by Yugoslavs, but who turn out to be Chetniks and who hand them over to the occupying Germans, led by Major Neufeld. To the puzzlement of the three young commandos, Mallory has foreseen this. Mallory spins the Germans a yarn about them being criminals and deserters which – amazingly – convinces the Germans. Mallory then persuades them to let Mallory et al cross through the lines into the Trap to rendezvous with the partisans, on the pretext of gaining valuable intelligence information from them.

So off Mallory, Miller and Andrea plus the three commandos go, to  meet the partisans and exchange genuine information, finding out about their troop deployments, about where the German armoured divisions really are. Then MM&A return to the Germans but, this time, they hold the Germans up at gunpoint, and force them to take our heroes to the cabin in the woods where the Krauts are holding four English prisoners of war.

Our heroes take the POWs up the hillside and over across to a high plateau where the snow is being trodden flat by hundreds of partisans so that a Wellington bomber can land. But, minutes after they left them tied and bound, a German patrol comes along and releases the imprisoned Germans, who follow them up the hillside and witness, from a distance, nine figures (our five heroes, plus the four released men) climb into the Wellington, which then takes off again. The Germans congratulate themselves. All along they knew our heroes were not the criminals they claimed to be, but were ‘enemy agents’: they allowed themselves to be captured, they allowed themselves to be locked up, they allowed our heroes to release the POWs, and they allowed them all to fly back to Allied HQ, because they had deliberately given them false information about the location of the two German armoured divisions.

Except that: Mallory knows the Germans know who they really are, he knows the Germans have planned to let them go; which is why he hasn’t flown off with the plane; the POWs were on it with a message to Jensen back at HQ, but the other five figures were lucky partisans impersonating our heroes.

The whole thing was a ruse and a sideshow. When our heroes met the real partisans, they learned about the German divisions’ true disposition and the German plan to attack the 7,000 partisans by crossing the Neretva bridge. This is the information they have sent back to Allied HQ.

Now the famous five go back down the hill to the same German hut they liberated the English POWs from half an hour earlier and where Major Neufeld is congratulating the Chetnik leader, Droshny, on their cunning plan – and once again hold up them up at gunpoint, this time to liberate Maria and her blind singer brother, Petar.

Who are they? We first met them in the Chetniks’ camp pretending to be baddys. They have an elaborate backstory – Maria’s is that her family were killed by partisans so she defected to the Chetniks and wanders freely everywhere accompanied by her blind brother, the minstrel singer. (But it won’t come as a surprise to readers used to MacLean that she turns out to be a double agent, working for the Allies all along, and that the blind singer turns out to be the head of Allied counter-espionage in the Balkans! and that they aren’t brother and sister, but are married).

Echoes of Eagles These plot twists and turns, and the way the truth is known only to the officer in charge, who only explains it bit by bit to his sidekick (here, Mallory to Reynolds) is a copy of the structure of Where Eagles Dare, in which only Major Smith knows every wrinkle of the plan, and only feeds it out to Lieutenant Schaeffer as required. Maria, the double-agent who is vital for keeping our heroes informed of Nazi intentions, is reminiscent of the Mary who, in Where Eagles Dare, is our girl on the inside. And in both novels the radio operator is murdered in sinister circumstances.

This book is full of echoes of its predecessor.

To cut a long story short: the remaining five heroes lead an attack on the Neretva dam. The German Colonel Zimmerman, who is in charge of the two armoured divisions, believes his Hauptman Neufeld has successfully sent the British agents off with misleading intelligence about the location of his tanks. The Allies play up to this misconception by elaborately bombing an area filled with wood mock-ups of tanks. So he thinks he and his divisions are safe. Little does he know that he has Captain Mallory, Dusty Miller and Andrea Stavros to contend with! Thus, Colonel Zimmerman confidently gives the go-ahead for his tanks and lorries and troops to start crossing the bridge across the river Neretva.

Which is a bad idea because, after much hand-to-hand fighting, shooting, chucking grenades, dodging patrols and a break-neck climb across a sheer cliff face, the heroes Mallory and Miller blow up the immense Neretva dam and the resulting torrent of water destroys the bridge, Zimmerman and most of his two divisions. More dead than alive our heroes stand exhausted by the edge of the gorge, watching the destructive waters gush past them, thinking tough guy thoughts.

In a brief epilogue they are received back at Allied HQ in Italy where they learn the Germans have had to send divisions to Yugoslavia to make good the gap, and the Allied attack – timed to coincide with this weakening of the German line – has been successful. Well done, chaps.

The book ends on a comic note as the ‘splendidly piratical’ Captain Jensen starts to mention that there’s just one more teeny, tiny job he’s got lined up for the boys. Cut to the expression of horror on Dusty Miller’s face – cue end credits and heroic war movie theme music.

Background

The Guns of Navarone, published in 1957, was Alistair MacLean’s second novel. Already it is rich in war-thriller clichés – the immensely strong partisan (Andrea) loyal to the clever Anglo-Saxon (New Zealand mountaineer-turned-commando Keith Mallory), the comically reluctant American demolitions expert ‘Dusty’ Miller, the earnest young Lieutenant Stephens, keen to prove himself and who, once he’s obviously dying of gangrene, volunteers to stay behind to hold the pass and sell his life dearly; and the Greek partisan who turns out to be a traitor, tsk tsk.

The novel was turned into the very successful 1961 movie, starring Gregory Peck as Mallory, David Niven as a non-American Miller, and Anthony Quinn as Zorba the partisan.

In the mid-1960s, so the story goes, MacLean was living near to Richard Burton, both in tax exile in Switzerland. Burton asked MacLean to write him a cracking wartime adventure yarn, something he could take his son to see. Six weeks later MacLean delivered the screenplay for Where Eagles Dare, a classic war movie starring Burton and the young, charismatic Clint Eastwood. Impressively, MacLean wrote the novel in tandem with the screenplay. Both have the classic MacLean characteristic, which is terrific pace, gripping the reader from the opening scenes in the plane flying over wartime Bavaria.

Force Ten From Navarone was not only the sequel to the original bestselling novel and movie, it was also written on the back of the book and movie success of Where Eagles Dare. It is, therefore, no surprise that it, too, has a stripped-down, no-nonsense narrative drive from the opening pages, that the scenes are often only a few pages long, that the characterisation is paper thin and that the twists, turns and revelations fly fast and furious.

But there’s something else at work which I think comes from MacLean’s close involvement with movies, and that is humour: he had seen that tough guys in the movies often have the snappiest one-liners, that in films like The Great Escape (1963) or The Dirty Dozen (1967) the tough, all-male, ready-for-anything atmosphere is reinforced by jokes, wisecracks, all-male banter.

The MacLean formula

Coming from reading Eric Ambler, Len Deighton, Graham Greene and Hammond Innes four things strike me about this novel and Alistair MacLean in general:

• Pace. Nothing gets in the way of the hurtlingly fast forward momentum of the story. There is no love interest and certainly none of the leisurely philosophical lucubrations which cloy a Greene novel.
• Suspense. The linear narrative is studded with unexpected twists and turns, double crosses and revelations – all of which maintain an atmosphere of boyish excitement and suspense.
• Paper-thin characters. It’s all men, almost all soldiers, and they are all a) tall, gaunt, war-weary b) supremely competent with guns, knives, explosives and all the other ‘Action Man’ paraphernalia.
• Terrible style. Not only are the characters tough guy stereotypes and the plot built of clichés, but the style includes hackneyed phrases, lots of repetitition of stock situations and feelings (defeat, despair, exhaustion), and prolonged, heavy-handed attempts at humour. MacLean is on record as saying he found it difficult to write, and it shows.

The superfluous adjective

A tell-tale sign of MacLean’s lack of subtlety is the excess adjective and thumping over-emphasis. ‘Indeed’ is a favourite word, used repeatedly to ram home the damn seriousness of a thing or situation.

The room was pleasantly redolent with the smell of burning pine, the source of which wasn’t difficult to locate: one could have roasted a very large ox indeed in the vast and crackling fireplace at the far end of the room. (p.25)

By this time… the darkened waters of the Neretva dam were clearly visible to the west and the railway track was now running very close indeed to the edge of what appeared to be a dangerously steep precipice. (p.153)

The brilliant illumination from the arc lights made it very clear indeed just what had happened. (p.213)

Repetition, comic There’s a type of repetition which emphasises the machine-like, clockwork efficiency of the heroes – Mallory, Miller, Andrea – and the fear and obedience they command. But it also emphasises that the text is operating in a particular kind of male territory of power and control. And the repetition is kind of humorous, like a gag, like a joke.

[Andrea shoves a Luger in Droshny’s face] ‘Please don’t tempt me.’ Droshny didn’t tempt him…

[If the hostages make a false move Mallory assures them Miller will shoot them.] ‘Please try to believe me.’ They believed him. (p.120)

‘Do exactly as you’re told,’ Neufeld ordered. The sergeant did exactly what he was told. (p.123)

Mallory said ‘Find out how to stop the damn thing.’ Miller looked at him coldly and set about trying to find out how to stop the damn thing. (p.153)

‘Drop those guns,’ he said. They dropped their guns. (p.217)

The text is jokily knowing about its own masculinity. It ironises its own dead-pan attitude.

Comedy It is one thing when the characters speak humorously, Dusty Miller in particular specialising in the wry, deadpan comment. But the text is in serious trouble when MacLean makes his (frequent) attempts at humour.

[Miller] ran forward and [gave the locomotive] several violent and well-directed kicks which clearly took into no account the future state of his toes… (p.150)

Miller made the descent to the ledge without incident, principally by employing his favourite mountain-climbing technique of keeping his eyes closed all the time. (p.157)

Comic writing has to be slick. It’s an art. And it is not MacLean’s forte. Some of the clunkier efforts are like watching your Dad do his party tricks. Morecambe and Wise  Dad’s Army or are not far away.

Repetitive repetition And then there’s just repetitiveness, of conception and of phrasing. Apparently it took MacLean about a month to write each novel and the speed and slapdash approach to prose shows on every page.

Miller took one brief glance at this terrifying prospect, stepped hurriedly back from the edge of the cliff and looked at Mallory in a silently dismayed incredulity. (p.156)

Reynolds looked at Mallory in an almost dazed incredulity. (p.166)

There are also half a dozen references to bad characters’ ‘wolfish grins’, several of the corpses are described as being in that distinctive huddled shape; there are the usual repeated assertions that all the heroes are tired, weary, exhausted etc. In other words, MacLean’s prose features habits of phrasing which recur (and are to increase in frequency in the later novels).

Bad And there are plenty of simply ham-fisted sentences, long and rambling and badly phrased.

The others rose and followed him, Groves and Reynolds exchanging glances which indicated more clearly than any words could possibly have done that they could have been even more wrong about Andrea than they had ever been about Mallory. (p.146)

Hundreds of long sentences like this which make their point clumsily.

Over emphasis As the climax approaches, the style becomes feverishly over-excited, with MacLean throwing buckets of dark adjectives at the wall to see what sticks.

The contrast was almost too much to be borne, the suddenly hushed silence strangely ominous, deathly, almost, in its sinister foreboding. (p.206)

The movie

Almost all MacLean’s novels were turned into movies and this one had the added appeal of being a sequel to the much-praised and commercially successful Guns of Navarone (1961). However, the movie of this book wasn’t made until 1978, and something went very wrong with film-making culture in the 1970s. Compare and contrast Roger Moore’s Bond films with Sean Connery’s. In 1969 Guy Hamilton directed the unquestionable classic The Battle of Britain, and he went on to direct Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun – each worse than its predecessor as the Bond franchise went steadily downhill. At least part of the reason for this was the producers’ and Roger Moore’s wish to make the films humorous – with dire consequences.

It was Hamilton who directed the 1978 movie version of Force 10, and it represents a measurable falling-off in comparison with the 1961 Navarone film: the parts of Mallory and Miller are played by Robert Shaw and Edward Fox – a come-down from Gregory Peck and David Niven. There is no love interest in the novel but one is created for the movie and played by Barbara Bach, hotfoot from stripping off in the Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. And, in the biggest travesty, the role defined by Anthony Quinn in the first movie is inhabited by Richard Kiel, Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Related links

• Force 10 From Navarone (novel) on Amazon
• Force 10 From Navarone (movie) on Amazon
• Force 10 From Navarone Wikipedia article

The first 22 Alistair MacLean novels

Third person narrator

1955 HMS Ulysses – war story about a doomed Arctic convoy.
1957 The Guns of Navarone – war story about commandos who blow up superguns on a Greek island.
1957 South by Java Head – a motley crew of soldiers, sailors, nurses and civilians endure a series of terrible ordeals in their bid to escape the pursuing Japanese forces.
1959 The Last Frontier – secret agent Michael Reynolds rescues a British scientist from communists in Hungary.

First person narrator – the classic novels

1959 Night Without End – Arctic scientist Mason saves plane crash survivors from baddies who have stolen a secret missile guidance system.
1961 Fear is the Key – government agent John Talbot defeats a gang seeking treasure in a crashed plane off Florida.
1961 The Dark Crusader – counter-espionage agent John Bentall defeats a gang who plan to hold the world to ransom with a new intercontinental missile.
1962 The Golden Rendezvous – first officer John Carter defeats a gang who hijack his ship with a nuclear weapon.
1962 The Satan Bug – agent Pierre Cavell defeats an attempt to blackmail the government using a new supervirus.
1963 Ice Station Zebra – MI6 agent Dr John Carpenter defeats spies who have secured Russian satellite photos of US missile bases, destroyed the Arctic research base of the title and nearly sink the nuclear sub sent to rescue them.

Third phase

1966 When Eight Bells Toll – British Treasury secret agent Philip Calvert defeats a gang who have been hijacking ships carrying bullion off the Scottish coast.
1967 Where Eagles Dare
1968 Force 10 From Navarone The three heroes from Guns of Navarone parachute into Yugoslavia to blow up a dam and destroy two German armoured divisions.
1969 Puppet on a Chain – Interpol agent Paul Sherman battles a grotesquely sadistic heroin-smuggling gang in Amsterdam.
1970 Caravan to Vaccarès – British agent Neil Bowman foils a gang of gypsies who are smuggling Russian nuclear scientists via the south of France to China.
1971 Bear Island – Doctor Marlowe deals with a spate of murders aboard a ship full of movie stars and crew heading into the Arctic Circle.

Bad

1973 The Way to Dusty Death – World number one racing driver Johnny Harlow acts drunk and disgraced in order to foil a gang of heroin smugglers and kidnappers.
1974 Breakheart Pass – The Wild West, 1873. Government agent John Deakin poses as a wanted criminal in order to foil a gang smuggling guns to Injuns in the Rockies and planning to steal government gold in return.
1975 Circus – The CIA ask trapeze genius Bruno Wildermann to travel to an unnamed East European country, along with his circus, and use his skills to break into a secret weapons laboratory.
1976 The Golden Gate – FBI agent Paul Revson is with the President’s convoy when it is hijacked on the Golden Gate bridge by a sophisticated gang of crooks who demand an outrageous ransom. Only he – and the doughty doctor he recruits and the pretty woman journalist -can save the President!
1977 – Seawitch – Oil executives hire an unhinged oil engineer, Cronkite, to wreak havoc on the oil rig of their rival, Lord Worth, who is saved by his beautiful daughter’s boyfriend, an ex-cop and superhero.
1977 – Goodbye California – Deranged muslim fanatic, Morro, kidnaps nuclear physicists and technicians in order to build atomic bombs which he detonates a) in the desert b) off coastal California, in order to demand a huge ransom. Luckily, he has also irritated maverick California cop, Ryder – by kidnapping his wife – so Ryder tracks him down, disarms his gang and kills him.