BATTLE HYMN

by Dean Hess ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 1956

Trained for the ministry, Lt. Col. Hess early in his Air Force career turned entirely from formal religious duties and became a war hero and ace. After his missions on the German front he organized the training of Korean flight officers and started the famous ""operation Kiddy Car"", ferrying Korean orphans to safety and helping to finance their necessary shelter and countless supplies (this he accomplished largely through the sale, at cut rate, of bootleg liquor). A faculty for aggressive piety or twentieth century-style humanitarianism combines in his personality with a brass-tack realism about the use of armed force. Despite his confessed quandary over some of his agonizing exploits such as accidentally bombing a dwelling filled with German children, Hess is stoutly convinced that totalitarianism must be stopped at all costs. He also possesses a more than justifiable pride in his own courage in action and the mastery he has achieved in battle technique, as in the instance when, with single plane helping him, he bombed and strafed both ends of a Red armored division thereby making escape impossible before reinforcements had arrived and wiped out the division. The book swings constantly from such brute violence to instances of tenderest sentiment and commiseration for the lonely soldiers and abandoned children of modern war, and sways the reader from excitement to compassion. The moving picture of the same name is to be released early in 1957.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1956

Categories: NONFICTION