Penguin Modern Classics

''The sheer charge of the writing swept me into another world'' The Times December 1943. A group of US fighter pilots is camped at a windswept air base in Norfolk. Their job is to escort bombers over Germany, and each mission could be their last. Among them are cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse (nicknamed ''Mickey Mouse''), who is almost on his way to becoming a Flying Ace, and reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother, who is starting to fall in love with an English woman. All they have in common is their courage - until the day their lives converge in ways they could never have imagined. ''Truly astonishing in its recreation of a time and place ... it is a novel of memory, satisfying on every imaginable level'' Washington Post