V-Bombs and Weathermaps: Reminiscences of World War II

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

Despite its unprepossessing title, this book is a warm and compelling
wartime memoir by a young navy officer. Later a music professor at SUNY
Potsdam, Brock McElheran was a Royal Canadian Navy meteorologist who was
posted to the United Kingdom just in time for the Nazis’ buzz-bomb
attacks in the summer of 1944. His account of the efforts used to
counter the “doodlebugs,” and of the damage they caused, is clear
and useful. McElheran himself was wounded badly in one V–1 raid that
destroyed the house he lived in, and his account of British morale under
fire, of the plastic surgery he and other “guinea pigs” underwent at
the hands of the skilled British and Canadian surgeons at East
Grinstead, and of the fiercesome V–2 attacks that soon began are
indeed interesting. There are also a few chapters on his early naval
training and his efforts to get overseas. Overall, the book is well
written, full of data, and humorous.