Joe Lockard, Technician Third Class, supposed that he was a fool, but he liked to encourage ambition. Permanent radar stations had not yet been installed at Pearl Harbor. There were six temporary stations, but none of them would have been operating that Sunday morning of December 7, 1941 if Joe didn't admire youngsters who wanted a break from the pack -- go-ahead guys like Private George Elliott, who asked Joe to keep the station open so that he could brush up on Radar Detection.

With this little-known fact, and through other little-known facts of this sort, and "forgotten" people, such as Joe Lockard and George Elliott, Earl Miers tells his story of World War II. He tells it dramatically, suspensefully and, most important, truthfully. It makes exciting reading, but also, occasionally, gruesome reading.

The author guides his readers back and forth across the huge stage on which the war was fought. There are telling thumbnail sketches of the heroes -- sung and unsung -- and of the "villains" as well, and descriptions of significant battles, each of which was a turning point in the war, whether victory or defeat for the allies.

From the scene at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, where all was bewilderment and confusion, the story moves to Washington, D.C., and then back to August, 1939 and Adolf Hitler's advice to his military commanders to "act brutally." A biographical sketch of Hitler helps the reader to understand what made him "the most dangerous man of the twentieth century" and to move on, step by step, through the war that lasted two thousand, one hundred and ninety-one days.

The aftermath is not neglected--the United Nations charter, the Nuremberg trials, the trials of the war criminals in Japan. But to G.I. Joe, these were things for the top brass to fret over. If, as the newspapers said, he had saved freedom in the world, then he wanted to enjoy a little of it, by picking up loose ends, and pasting his real life together again.

This is a book no reader will soon forget. Eminently readable, it tells the truth about the horrors of war and about the courage of men.