Gentleman Officer

Verney was born in 1913 and, like many young men of his generation, was sufficiently concerned by the threat of Nazi Germany to the peace of Europe and the security of Great Britain that, in 1937, he joined the Territorial Army, or yeomanry, whose members trained as soldiers during summer holidays and on weekends. The first volume is all about his training for war and the war itself, at least up to the point in the summer of 1943 when Verney and his fellow soldiers are parachuted into Sardinia on a mission to blow up German airfields and fail to make it back to the submarines that await them because they are taken prisoner by the Italians. The first volume of this duo appeared in the same year as the second book in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy; one wonders whether Verney had read Waugh’s Men at Arms, the first novel in the trilogy, published in 1952, because the tone of voice is uncannily similar.

Source: www.newcriterion.com