SONS OF THE OTHERS

This was pulled out of an old hat, this fiction rehash of the Battle of France. Gibbs has done this kind of thing recurrently, in his recent years -- and he doesn't do it very well. He clothes comparatively current history in thin camouflage of fiction, and the result is pretty plotless, and quickly dated. The scene is set at Arras; there are French girls doing a Mlle. de Armentieres, there are English valiants billeted there, there are French brothers and lovers going off to war, there are months of inactivity and then the blitzkrieg, blunders and betrayals, evacuation -- and Dunkirk. The book closes with the good old carry-on salvo. Disappointing.