Pugh, Marshall, — COMMANDER CRABB.

World Distributors, London, 1957, 1st in imprint, paperback, 160pp, coloured pictorial upper wrapper, Lionel Philip Kenneth Crabb was an amiable drifter between jobs until he managed to join the Royal Navy in WW2. His previous attempts to join RNVR had been unsuccessful but in 1940 he managed to join the Royal Naval Patrol Service where he found his colleagues were certain that they had some special dispensation from the Articles of War. At the end of 1940 he was commissioned and then the Navy found he had a weakness in his left eye which barred him from further sea service. Volunteering for special duties a saloon bar acquaintance helped him discover and join the ‘Rendering Mines Safe’ branch and he was sent to Gibraltar. His arrival coincided with the Italian campaign of using limpet mines against allied shipping. He formed an underwater working party and spent the rest of the war dealing with any underwater explosives found in Allied waters and in Italy. His death in 1956 is still somewhat mysterious. He weas believed to have been working for MI6 and investigating a Soviet cruiser visiting Portsmouth but no details have ever been admitted and the Cabinet papers are closed until 2057, lightly rubbed at tips, faint diag. crease upper tip upper wrapper, edges tanned, very good,