During the Second World War, Byron Farwell (1921–1999) served as a captain of engineers attached to the Mediterranean Allied Air Force in the British Eighth Army area.

"[Mr. Farwell] reminds us how much of history has always been about war. The figures he etches are Horatio Alger types with epaulets, conventional men whom luck and daring raised to unconventional situations. . . . Sparely but convincingly, Mr. Farwell conveys a sense of the society they worked in, one that tolerated eccentricity and excess but not transgressions of its male mythology—in which riding and religion were crucial, along with laudanum and chloral and stoic hardihood. Those who shun analyses and learned footnotes, preferring a thundering tale well told—or rather eight of them—should not miss this book."

During the Second World War, Byron Farwell (1921–1999) served as a captain of engineers attached to the Mediterranean Allied Air Force in the British Eighth Army area.

"[Mr. Farwell] reminds us how much of history has always been about war. The figures he etches are Horatio Alger types with epaulets, conventional men whom luck and daring raised to unconventional situations. . . . Sparely but convincingly, Mr. Farwell conveys a sense of the society they worked in, one that tolerated eccentricity and excess but not transgressions of its male mythology—in which riding and religion were crucial, along with laudanum and chloral and stoic hardihood. Those who shun analyses and learned footnotes, preferring a thundering tale well told—or rather eight of them—should not miss this book."