On his way across the Pacific, war caught up to heavy bomber pilot, Capt. Rowan T. Thomas, the author of this human story of the 200,000 mile bombing odyssey made by 199 men of the 513th Bombardment Squadron. As the reader moves with these boys from Karachi, India, to the Middle East, Greece, North Africa, and finally toward Italy, the great global war finally boils itself down to a thrilling and terrible and personal adventure. This is adventure not in terms of millions, but in the terms of a young Mississippi lawyer who went quickly from his trials by jury to trial by warfare. It is adventure in terms that you and I and the man next door can understand.

This is a great book, not because the author personally turned the tide of epoch battles, but because he was enough a fighting part of them to translate his experience and those of his fellow officers and men into the language of the folk at home – the folk whose hopes and prayers inside the world’s most decorated squadron into the courageous, amazing unit it became. Captain Thomas writes with a feeling for democracy which, as his Squadron Commander, Major John B. Holst, says, ” is good tonic for all those who would be free to read.”