JACKSON'S WAR

As in The Hill (filmed with Sean Connery) Rigby again places his action among British troops in Libya during early World War II and explodes with black dialogue. Obedience to King and country is skewered with blistering underdog humor and impressive pessimism. Here in the rear echelon only human voices are fired in anger and not a gun is heard until the last chapter when a night barrage covers the desert with daylight. Corporal Jackson is an uncompromising coward who hides every wound with laughter. Nothing is so foul that Jackson can't smell some unpatriotic good in it, nor does the death of his closest friend budge him from his lack of convictions. Jackson and his buddies are mobile canteen workers bent on getting out of the war zone. Nominally servicemen, they wear mixed uniforms and will sell anything to stay profitably alive and drunk. When a bright new fumbling CO decides to shake them up with discipline, they rebel and are soon bound under guard for court-martial in Cairo. However, they get their guards drunk and escape to a monumental bender of fleshpots and hashish. Their scandals are so flaming that the men can't even be tried when caught--except Jackson. And no one can discommode a court-martial with more relish than Jackson as he shears through the King's Regulations...Zesty as hell and full of spit-in-your-bloody eye.