Globe Pequot / Sheridan House
Pages: 352
•
978-1-57409-269-1 • Paperback • April 2008 • $19.95 • (£14.99)
Tony Groom joined the Royal Navy at the age of 17, determined to become a diver. As a member of the Fleet Clearance Diving Team, he found himself diving for mines, dealing with unexploded bombs and being shot at in the Falklands War. He left the Navy in 1985 and has since traveled the world as a commercial diver.
Anyone who has ever been affiliated with a military underwater demolition team or had the desire to enlist in one will not be able to put down Diver by Tony Groom. . . . Much of his first-person narrative is a candid look at adventures, relationships, personal triumphs and failures of a man whose job is to install or defuse explosives in cold dark waters. It demands nerves of steel, since one slight error would be the last error.
— Northeast Dive News
Diver is the story of Tony Groom, a man who enlisted at the age of seventeen to become a diver for the Royal Navy. Serving countless years under extremely dangerous conditions, he speaks on his past career and his current career as a commercial diver.
A tale of a man who truly loves what he does when no one else would think of doing it, Diver is an enthusiastically recommended tale.
— Bookwatch
Wide-ranging, illuminating and sympathetic ... This tale fills a massive gap and is long overdue.
— Commodore Michael C. Clapp
The Royal Navy Clearance Divers, not the SAS, are the British mystery unit of the Falklands War.
— Major General Julian Thompson
Epitomises the esprit de corps of the Royal Navy's Clearance Diving branch, as well as the close-knit camaraderie of the commercial offshore diver.
— Mick Fellows