1919. Martin Falconer, a veteran airman while still in his teens and now adjusting to peacetime, is asked whether he would like to go to Russia to fight the Bolsheiks. His answer? ‘try and stop me.’ Martins’s girl-friend Charley takes the news calmly, but adds, “Just keep away from all those countesses and baronesses and things. Russia’s full of ’em’. There are baronesses and countesses, many of them concerned only with saving themselves, but others, like Olga, are working ceaselessly among the sick on the hospital trains …

The Great War had taken away much of Martin’s idealism, shown him the realities of war and how little glamour there is in battle. But the Russia of 1919, a chaotic, desperate country, shows him another sort of war, a civil war of great savagery and bitterness on both sides. Nothing is as simple as he had thought. But there is too the excitement and danger Martin thrives on, and his adventures as he flies his plane over the Russian steppes