The Ninety and Nine Author:William Brinkley A novel that takes the reader straight into the realities of war, and into the hearts of men who fight it. Once again, William Brinkley is represented in the milieu he loves best: the sea and the Navy in World War II. — Few Navy men in that war fought the sea and the enemy in more peril and more uncertain vessels than the men of the LST 1826 on ... more »the run from Naples to Anzio, where there were the mines and the submarines to get by and when they got there the big guns in the hills waiting and the Messerschmitts coming in low over the land at first light.
Humor and tragedy live side by side in this story. On the supply run to the Anzio beachhead the crew of the 1826 had accomplished the safe delivery of everything from mules to a detachment of nurses.
On the quieter end of the run, they established, with the eager collaboration of the local signorine, perhaps one of the most distinctive and hilariously ingenious "happy hours" in the history of the U.S. Navy, in a Neapolitan cave, accessible only by water and secluded from the Shore Patrol.
Interwoven with some of the most vivid sea action yet written about World War II are two gentle and moving love stories: That of Lieutenant Matthew Barclay, who fought the idea of wartime love, and the Army nurse who'd been a passenger on the 1826 going to Anzio; the other that of Seaman Carlyle, who faces a dramatic general court-martial for smuggling Navy supplies to the Italian girl whom he loves.
Destined for the same immense popularity of Mr. Brinkley's great bestseller, Don't Go Near the Water, The Ninety and Nine is a bold, sweeping novel of people at war, told with tenderness, sometimes with humor, and often with great drama. It builds to a shattering climax.« less