AND THEN WE HEARD THE THUNDER

Report repeated from the July 15th bulletin, when scheduled for fall, as follows: ""During World War II Solly Saunders, a good-looking Negro law student, leaves his new wife to go to fight and meets racial prejudice at an army training camp in Georgia, but this comes as more of a shock to Saunders than the reader. A love affair with a small town Georgia Negress adds guilt to his already growing list of conflicts; his ambition to be an officer (needled by his wife's letters); divided loyalties with his army friends; and a decision whether to return to law school or become a writer. Official Army prejudice against Negroes is compounded with civilian indignities when Saunders unit is hustled off to a combat zone in the Pacific. The love triangle Solly Saunders' has not yet resolved is perpetuated when his wife dies in childbirth, and he is caught up in a new affair in Australia. Here there is one scene of some power, a war-within-a-war race riot; but on the whole, while the black and white issue remains strong, this fictional account of 'race' and war is poorly put together and achieved through standard stereotypes. The author, trying hard to achieve thunder, manages little more than sound effects.