Wayward Warriors

Wayward Warriors is concerned with a mutiny on the Australian destroyer Jacaranda during World War II. A new commander, Hardridge, widely dubbed “The Fuehrer” for his ruthless ideas about the maintenance of discipline on ships, begins by studying the personnel files and soon learns that there is an incorrigible rebel and misfit, McCall, in the crew. Here indeed is a challenge to him. He knows how to deal with the McCalls of this world, despite the advice of his officers that a bit of tact instead of brutality will get him further. McCall does prove incorrigible and spends most of his time under one sort of punishment or another. But the other men sympathise with him, not because of who he is but out of their intense dislike of Hardridge and his “gestapo” ways, a dislike that is shared by nearly all the officers. So general is the hatred that when Hardridge brings things to a climax by prohibiting sleeping on the decks in a very hot climate (to prevent homosexuality, as he thinks), mutiny breaks out.