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Walter Lord

Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons Hardcover – August 3, 1977

by Walter Lord (Author)

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A book concerned with the account of the Pacific War Coastwatchers of the Solomons.

Print length

322 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Viking
Publication date

August 3, 1977
ISBN-10

0670437654
ISBN-13

978-0670437658
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Martin Clemens
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A. B. Feuer
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Eric A. Feldt
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John Lewis Floyd
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Walter Lord
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A. B. Feuer
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Martin Clemens
82
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21 offers from $16.00
John Lewis Floyd
1,679
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28 offers from $7.51
Martin Clemens
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Eric A. Feldt
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James D. Hornfischer
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; 1st edition (August 3, 1977)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 322 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670437654
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670437658
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #976,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #483,734 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
506 ratings

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Walter Lord

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Walter Lord's A Night to Remember is a minute-by-minute account of the Titanic's final hours. Lord wrote 12 books, honing an eye-witness approach to history whether it was Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor (Day of Infamy) or the defense of the Alamo (A Time to Stand) or the Battle of Midway (Incredible Victory). In The Way It Was, he tells his own story, about his life and books.

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Lord knew that the important part of history is the people, not the dates.

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2018

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This book would seem an unlikely choice for a woman of a certain age who's never seen one nanosecond of combat, but.... I read Walter Lord's A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic, and I know how well he wrote non-fiction. I've also watched movies like South Pacific and In Harm's Way which touch lightly on the usefulness of the coastwatchers. Finally, my grandfather served in the US Navy in the South Pacific during World War II, and in reading military history about this time and place, I understand why he came home with nightmares.

Walter Lord's book shows why the Solomon Islands were crucial territory during the war, and the explanation of how the coastwatchers were formed and what these people went through is excellent. The coastwatchers' emblem was the peace-loving Ferdinand the Bull; they were supposed to observe and pass along information, they were not to fight. But this self-reliant group of independent thinkers knew that there are times when one has to think outside the box.

What these people went through runs the gamut of H's from hair-raising to humorous to heart-warming. Lord's non-fiction reads like fiction because he knew that what's important is people, not dates. Readers learn about a priest who was ordered to evacuate but managed to avoid leaving and of a nurse doing valuable work with the coastwatchers who couldn't escape her own evacuation orders. Readers learn about a young Navy lieutenant named John F. Kennedy and of the more than one hundred pilots the coastwatchers saved. And who could forget the submarine torpedo room turned into a nursery for evacuees and the ten-month-old baby who wouldn't stop crying unless he was being held by a burly bearded torpedoman named Phillips?

The coastwatchers worked among natives who could be friends one day and enemies the next. They had to remain hidden from Japanese soldiers who were constantly searching for them. They often had to move from one hiding place to another at very short notice, and they couldn't leave behind their radios (which weighed hundreds of pounds). Moving by stealth in thick, wet jungle and mountainous terrain-- often with injured pilots-- was brutal, exhausting work.

Lonely Vigil brings the work of these men to life. It's an important chapter in the history of World War II that will stay with me for a long, long time.

36 people found this helpful

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drj

Great read !

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2015

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I have now read four books about the coastwatchers: Lonely Vigil (by Walter Lord), Alone on Guadalcanal (by Martin Clemens), The Coast Watchers (by Eric Feldt), and Coast Watching in WWII (A.B. Feur).

If you would like to learn about how the coastwatcher organization aided the fight against Japan in the South Pacific, the most comprehensive book is The Coast Watchers. This book was written by the man who set up and managed the coastwatcher organization (codename Ferdinand) from 1939 until early 1943 (when he stepped down after suffering a heart attack), and was the first book on the coastwatchers published after WWII (the first edition coming out in 1946).

Lonely Vigil covers much but not all of the same ground as The Coast Watchers, but goes into greater detail and is a more enjoyable read. This does not mean The Coast Watchers was a bad read, just not as enjoyable as Lonely Vigil. This should not be surprising, since the author of Lonely Vigil (Walter Lord) is a highly accomplished author.

Coast Watching in WWII (subtitle: Operations against the Japanese on the Solomon Islands, 1941-43) sounds as though it would offer a comprehensive review of coast watching operations during those year. In fact, this book covers only the coastwatching operations on Bougainville and neighboring Buka Island. This book is primarily the edited memories of two coastwatchers on Bougainville: Jack Read and Paul Mason). That should be interesting, but these accounts are stylistically dull by comparison with the Alone on Guadalcanal (discussed below) and Lonely Vigil, which is based on both written records and numerous interviews and recounts the same coastwatching tales on Bougainville in a more interesting fashion. In short, if a person has read Lonely Vigil (which was published about 20 years before this book), he could skip reading this book and miss little or nothing.

If you want to get a feeling for what life as a coastwatcher was really like, Alone on Guadalcanal is the book for you, as it is a first-person account put together by a single author. The author, Martin Clemens, was a government official before the invasion by Japan, and so the book offers not only the perspective of a coastwatcher but also that of a (thoughtful) British colonial official who was trying to manage things on that end as well. As a government official, Martin Clemens kept a diary all during his time in the Solomon Islands and so he was able to do a great job recounting his days as a coastwatcher.

Seeing that Alone on Guadalcanal was first published in 1998, one might well wonder just how much Martin Clemens could remember. In fact, as the author explains in the book's preface, the first draft of the book was written in the early 1950 but a final book never materialized because by that time there was already a great abundance of military books on the market and publishers did not have much interest in his story. It was only decades latter that a chance meeting between Martin Clemens and a US Marine veteran got the ball rolling again and eventually lead to the publication of the book by the Naval Institute Press. To make a long story short, even though the book wasn't published until 1998, the author actually did most of the writing in the early 1950s, when his memories were still relatively fresh.

I'm very glad I read three out of these four books about the coastwatchers. As explained above, I found Coast Watching in WWII was not a worthwhile read in terms of content or style (but I read it to the end so I could be fair). In terms of good reading, I enjoyed the first-person perspective of Alone on Guadalcanal the most. Lonely Vigil was also a compelling read.

29 people found this helpful

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Luka Peternel

Excellent book that offers a unique and different perspective on the Solomon Islands campaign

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2021

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Anyone remotely interested in the Solomon Islands campaign of the Pacific War must have heard of Coastwatchers. They were pretty much essential in bridging the gap in inferiority of US fighters compared to the Japanese navy aircraft, in particular Grumman F4F Wildcat compared to Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter and even Mitsubishi G4M medium bombers. Without Coastwatchers acting as an early warning system, Wildcats with their slow rate of climb (and limited range of radar on Guadalcanal) could not have attained altitude advantage with respect to the Zero fighters, which was pretty much the main thing that evened the odds. It is often overlooked that G4M medium bombers were actually faster than Wildcats and could easily escape Wildcats without them having a good timing, positioning and altitude advantage during the intercept. Warnings from Coastwatchers thus gave the Marine and Navy fighters good chances to intercept. Not to mention all the downed pilots they saved.

The book covers personal stories and adventures of various Coastwatchers scattered around the Solomon Islands. The book is written extremely well and reads as a coherent story. Yet, at the same time, it also maintains the level and aspects of a good history book. I particularly like that gives a unique and different perspective on the Solomon Islands campaign, with respect to the more classical books on the topic. While this book can easily be read as a stand-alone (with some minimum extra background on the campaign), I would however recommend reading either "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign" by John B. Lundstrom or "Gudalacanal" by Richard B. Frank, or both, before you read this. This would give you plenty of background to really appreciate a detailed story of Coastwatchers.

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Papa Inura

A great historical book about Coastwatchers

Reviewed in Australia on March 19, 2020

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A fascinating book about a group of men who served under extreme difficulties to assist the American armed forces in the South Pacific during WW2.

Friedrich Gottschalk

Geschichte gut erzählt

Reviewed in Germany on November 20, 2013

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Die "Coastwatcher" auf den Solomon-Inseln haben nicht unwesentlich zum allierten Erfolg in diesem Bereich beigetragen. In den einschlägigen Geschichtswerken werden sie aber eher am Rande erwähnt. Walter Lord, ein Historiker mit einem brillianten Erzählstil, berichtet in diesem Buch ausführlich über dieses im deutschen Sprachraum eher unbekannte Kapitel des 2. Weltkrieges. Natürlich sollte man schon recht gute Englischkenntnisse haben, aber wer sich mit diesem Teil der Geschichte beschäftigt, wird ohnehin auf angloamerikanische Literatur zurückgreifen müssen und hat daher entsprechende Vorkenntnisse. Einmal zur Hand genommen, möchte man gar nicht mehr aufhören zu lesen.

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LesHT

Little known heroes.

Reviewed in Australia on October 6, 2020

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Having been to Guadalcanal a few times and visiting some notable WWII sights I found the stories of the Coast Watchers very interesting and was able to relate to a few of the locations mentioned in this book. A very good read.

Don Easton

Unsung heroes

Reviewed in Canada on March 22, 2020

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Fascinating stories about people working deep behind enemy lines. Many of these people were civilians who had little if any military training, yet volunteered and placed themselves at extreme risk. Their actions were vital for success.

DRB

Coastwatchers

Reviewed in Canada on December 23, 2021

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This is the most detailed history of the coastwatchers in the Pacific WWII that I've read. It is well done and gives a good historical account of their contribution to the war in the Solomon Islands.

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Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons Hardcover – August 3, 1977

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