Book excerpt: Utilising eye-witness accounts of those who participated in them, Destroyer Actions focuses on the human side of naval operations during the first eight months of the Second World War. Harry Plevy draws upon primary sources of both naval and civilian provenance, many of which are previously unpublished and therefore have never been available to the general reader. Extensively researched through comparison of British and German operational logs, and including first-hand evidence from Polish, French and Norwegian sources which reveal the true impact of the conflict at sea upon the lives of the people of all nations caught up in it, this book gives a comprehensive picture of destroyer actions at the beginning of the Second World War.