Full of extraordinary characters, this tale of a secret mission is based
upon previously unpublished diarires, letters, and reports
In 1943, with Rommel's Afrika Korps in full retreat after El Alamein,
Churchill's War Cabinet met to discuss the opening of a new front. Its
battles would be fought not on the beaches of Normandy but amidst the
glaciers of the Antarctic. Intended to safeguard the Falkland Islands
from Japanese invasion and to deny harbors in the sub-Antarctic
territories to German surface raiders and U-boats, the expedition also
sought to reassert British territorial rights in the face of Argentine
provocation. This would achieve its ultimate expression four decades
later in the Falklands War but the British bases secretly established in
1944 would also go on to play a vital part in a global "conflict": the
Cold War. Based upon contemporary sources, "Operation Tabarin" tells for
the first time the story of the only Antarctic expedition to be launched
by any of the combatant nations of World War IIand one of the most
curious episodes in what Ernest Shackleton called "the white warfare of
the south." The expedition leader was the redoubtable "Scout" Marr, who
had sailed with Shackleton. James Murdie was a key figure, a veteran of
the Endurance expedition. Captain Victor Marchesi spent three seasons
looking for U-boats armed with a revolver and sent letters with British
Falklands stamps to embassies all over the world to establish British
sovereignty."
