YOU'LL WALK TO MANDALAY

A third novel, the first to appear here, has the authority of an actual experience- aboard a hospital ship during the Burma retreat in 1942, under fire from the Japanese and later the Burmese. Short on food, facilities, personnel, the caseload of casualties is an exhausting ordeal for brusque Captain Gillespie, and particularly Sister Mabel Weston, who has sought out this theatre in the hope of finding the young cousin who was like a brother to her. She gets little assistance from Nina Figueredo, a sulky Anglo-Indian nurse, but in times of particular stress it is Major Dicky Darling, also a patient, hero-worshipped by his men, who proves decisive and effective. As the days pass, Mabel- with her dull, plain looks, and her undeviating dedication, and Darling, with his cavaer courage, prove an attraction of opposites. He tries to spare her the knowledge that her cousin has died; she helps him to conceal the arms he has smuggled aboard; they try to case the death of a young boy brooding over those left behind- and killed; and Mabel overlooks Darling's irresponsible (he has been exposed to smallpox) intimacy with Nina. The ""new moral landscape"" of war changes those who are caught up in it, shatters more rigid canons- military and personal, but imposes new obligations.... Sibly writes firmly, knowingly, competently- qualities which deserve mention but assure no stronger reader interest.