"One of the best memoirs of the Second World War."The IndependentDelightful reading.The Economist My brother officers. Are they human? Thus reads the first journal entry of young John Verney, twenty-three years old, graduate of Eton and Oxford, lover of modern literature and art. Verney has, almost on a whim, joined the North Somerset Yeomanry (cavalry) shortly before the Second World War. When war breaks out, Verney is posted to the Middle East where, almost in spite of himself, he learns to be a soldier. He becomes a parachutist, joins an irregular organization on S.O.E. lines, and then leads a drop into Sardinia to attack German airfields. His adventures thereincluding two weeks wandering through enemy territory, his capture, and his eventual escapeare brilliantly told. Woven into the fabric of this narrative of a young man growing reluctantly to maturity and coming to terms with a way of life that is basically uncongenial to him, Verney shares his thoughts and feelings about his wife, Lucinda, and the child he has never seen, and his longing to return to both of them.