DUNCAN HARDING
As a 17 year old Duncan Harding volunteered for active service immediately when war was declared. He left Dartmouth Naval College to become a gunner officer cadet on the venerable HMS Warspite. In 1940 he saw action off Norway and was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery there trying to stop the German invasion of that country. But young Duncan Harding didn’t like the routine of the old ‘battle wagon’. He volunteered again for small craft. Over the next few months he led an adventurous life on coastal landings and the like. In mid 1940 he won the Dutch Order of Orange Nassau for his part in rescuing the Dutch royal family from the German invaders. A year later as a full lieutenant he was wounded and won the DSC for his bravery in the raid on St Nazuire. But the young officer who was still not eligible to vote was not out of action very long. In the Mediterranean his destroyer was sunk by the French working with the German master and sent to a North African POW camp. Not for long. There he escaped and trekked eight days through the Western Desert until he reached the lines of the British 8th Army.
Again he was mentioned in dispatches and promoted becoming the youngest Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy. In the autumn of 1944 he was seriously wounded during the Anglo-Canadian invasion of the Dutch Walcheren peninsula. Released from hospital Duncan was ready to tackle the Japanese in the Far East. But before his ship could reach Singapore, the Japanese had surrendered.
But Duncan Harding’s adventurous like at seas was not yet over. Although most of what he did in the 1950’s is still secret, it is known that at the height of the Cold War, he helped to run Anglo-American agents in Albania and Latvia. But by now his war wounds were beginning to play and he decided to retire on a half pension and become a writer. With the same energy and determination which had made him one of the Royal Navy’s outstanding skippers, it didn’t take Duncan Harding long to become one of the country’s most outstanding writers of Naval fiction.
