Footsteps in the sea - Ann Neve

A sequel to Ride upon the Storm.Twenty years on, it’s 1939 and the children we met in Ride Upon the Storm are now grown up. The Second World War has just begun and they are preparing to serve their country in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. They battle with the sea and with the enemy on Arctic Convoys, on the motor torpedo boats of HMS Midge, based at Great Yarmouth, and on the high-speed launches of No24 Air Sea Rescue Unit, RAF Gorleston. Ashore, they embrace a make-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die attitude whilst yearning for a love which will last and will give them a stake in the future – if they survive.At home, the families living in East Anglia are once more in the front line. They must adjust to life in a military zone, with the ever-present risk of invasion, the constant air-raids, shortages and rationing. They must accept a coastline and countryside of barbed wire, mines and tank traps; of road-blocks, gun batteries and searchlights; airfields every few miles and planes constantly overhead. And they must adapt to the huge influx of strangers: refugees from the countries Hitler has already invaded; servicemen from the Commonwealth and the United States of America; evacuees from the London Blitz.This is a story of selfless courage and dogged stoicism, of sorrow and humour, of bitterness and joy, of casual encounters and enduring devotion, told against a background of events which people in Norfolk and Suffolk experienced in World War II.