COMBAT IN THE SKY

Although classified as fiction, Arch Whitehouse has drawn on the real experiences of men in combat, men he knew personally, whose adventures occurred during recent wars. The ten separate accounts in this compendium illustrate the wide range that different men have in reaction to combat situations. As the author points out in his introduction, courage eludes definition, and it is for the reader to decide the components that comprise it, since the incident rather than its motivation is presented here. The men we meet in these stories vary in economic class and military rank. There's Chauncey Boyne, intent on winning medals, but on a special mission he learns that medals ""are not always the true symbols of a man's worth""; Pinky Claymore, who feared the responsibility of leadership, but then found he could meet it; Pete Coyne, who in his plain and simple way was instrumental in the safe landing of a plane he had never learned to fly; and all the rest who made American victory possible in the sky. Air Corps jargon and rough-and-ready language will appeal to boys of this generation curious about the war experiences of fathers and older brothers. This reader found it a bit repetitious.