BIG DISTANCE

This might be called another Battle Report of Army Air force in the Pacific. I don't think it can be surpassed. There doubtless will be numerous books showing in more intimate detail one phase or another of the gruelling battle back to victory, starting with the makeshifts of the early defeats and their aftermath, ending with victory in sight and Leyte again ours. It's all there -- a sober record in terms of men and machines -- a miracle of achievement against the anachronisms of the Pacific -- the most modern arm, the most primitive setting. The 5th and the 13th Army Air Forces, air men and ground crews, anecdotes of different outfits, with the Jolly Rogers and the 49er's coming in for a generous slice of space throughout. Richard Bong -- with his unbelievable record, Buzz Wagner, McGuire, Tennille and many others, in brief unsentimentalized profile -- men against odds, and winning. There's General Kenney, inspired leader with the genius for improvisation that made the air force achieve the impossible against an enemy to whom the unexpected was the greatest hazard. There's the team play -- there's a lot of fairly technical strategy and tactics -- there's a sense of integrating pattern which we rarely get in reading history-in-the-making. And the whole is livened by a gift for picking anecdotes out of the groove -- stories such as the White King of New Britain -- stories of strange jungle rescues -- the story of the Marine General and his private bombings. There's humor and pathos -- and grim reality.