When most people discuss World War II, they talk about the European theater or the Pacific theater rarely do they discuss the battle that took place right off our eastern shores in the Atlantic. That battle is the subject of an intriguing book, The Mathews Men, that details the sacrifices of the American merchant fleet during World War II. The book focusses on one county in Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay that produced a large number of merchant shipmen that kept commerce flowing for the United States before and during the war. One family, the Hodges, encompasses the toll that the war took as their sons sailed off to terrible hardships and death.
The Atlantic Ocean from Maine to the Gulf became some of the most dangerous waters in the world as U-boats targeted the essential American supplies for Great Britain. What gives the book an interesting twist is the inclusion of interviews, letters and diaries from the German U-Boat sailors who raided the shores of the United States. One story has a U-boat surfacing and the captain asking the survivors how the Brooklyn Dodgers were doing because he had lived in Brooklyn before the war. It is these stories that are throughout the book that bring the experiences of the sailors to life. The merchant shipmen had the same casualty rate as the U.S. Marines in the war – a startling statistic. After reading this book you wonder why there is not a monument somewhere on the overcrowded Mall in Washington to that sacrifice.
It also details through the Hodges as well as other families from Mathews the anguish of not really ever knowing what happened to your son, husband or father. Each family had to be prepared for the letter that would come from the shipping company followed by confirmation from the American government. The book highlights that like so much of the early war effort not enough was done to protect the merchant fleet against attack. This failure led to thousands of men lying at the bottom of the ocean. The fact that there are so many wrecks including U-boats dotting the coastal waters was startling.
Anyone interested in World War II will come away from this book with a different perspective of the Battle of the Atlantic and once again, admiration for those who fought it.
Bowery & Canal 