Kemp Tolley was an attache to the Soviet Navy during WWII. He wrote this book during the late Cold War, which makes its general fairness all the more impressive. Don't be fooled by the title, which sounds like some sort of role-playing game--this is a keeper.

There are numerous funny stories in this book. Tolley, who spoke (perhaps present tense; word is he's still around) fluent Russian and adapted to Russian culture rather than attempting to bend it into something Americanesque, genuinely liked the people of Russia. He has done a fine job of separating this from his views on the Soviet political system, giving us a very fair portrayal of Russians (and to a lesser degree other USSR ethnic groups).

This would be a fine read for anyone planning to visit Russia. While the politics have changed a lot, the culture has changed far less, and this book would help the visitor to appreciate it.

Admiral Tolley writes from his personal experiences in wartime Stalist USSR. He spent two years as a naval attache dealing with the Soviet government and supporting the Allied efforts to supply the USSR with needed material. He met, wooed and wed his wife there. Later, following his transfer back to the fleet he enlisted the intervention of senior Soviet official to obtain an exit visa for his wife long after his own departure. Various wartime travel to Murmansk, Vladivostok, and other ports add spice to this excellent book. Also included is a brief sketch of the author's experiences as a Russian language student in Shanghai and Riga before WWII and a trip across Russia by train to Western Europe. A good read.

This book, by the late Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley, is a very interesting and at times humorous account of the life of U.S. Navy gunboat sailors on China's Yangtze River from the time of the American Civil War through the mid-20th Century. During that period, China went through a tremendous amount of upheaval that included revolution, civil wars, major wars with Japan, and smaller wars with western countries. In the midst of China's upheaval, small American gunboats and those of other foreign nations tried to protect the lives and commercial interests of their citizens living in China.

Kemp Tolley, who passed away in 2000 at age 92, was himself a young Naval Officer in the 1930s when he was assigned to the Yangtze River Patrol. From that vantage point his tales of U.S. Navy life on the Yangtze--both on duty and off duty--in the 1930s make for some interesting anecdotes, whether they deal with U.S. sailors battling the river and Chinese bandits, romancing White Russian and Chinese women, or brawling with British and Italian gunboat crews in the bars of Yangtze River towns.

"Yangtze Patrol" is a great true adventure story and captures some of the same spirit as the novel, "The Sand Pebbles," which dealt with one U.S. gunboat crew during the Chinese Nationalist Revolution in the mid-1920s. However, any American reader of "Yangtze Patrol" needs to keep in mind how most Chinese viewed the Patrol. That view is well summed up in "The Sand Pebbles" where an American missionary asks Jake Holman, a gunboat sailor, how he'd feel if, instead of American gunboats on the Yangtze, there were Chinese gunboats sailing up and down the Mississippi River.

A fogotten chapter of Naval history is brought to life in this fabulous volume. Kemp Tolley, once a sailor in the Yangtze river patrol, outlines the Navy's service in China from its humblest beginnings prior to the cival war through the loss of the last gunboat in 1941. For those of us interested in Navy history, This book brings a lively and action packed legacy from our "China Sailors"