LONE AND LEVEL SANDS

One man's story of his ""hitch"" with Army Air. That the man was Colonel Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney may have been the reason in part for some of the drama of his assignments, but not for the details in his record of ""the facts of service"" as he shifted from India to North Africa to the Pacific. The greater part of his diary is virtually a day by day report of the months leading up to the turning point at El Alamein, with the 8th Army and the indomitable 12th Group airforce. From the relative luxuries of Cairo to the grim realities of desert warfare under almost constant attack, he gives his readers a sense of being behind the scenes described in broad scope at top level in various books (Montgomery-Rommel etc.). In briefer report he tells of his trip to the Pacific with Forrestal- his work with plans division in Washington.