The Far Side Of The Moon (1964) By George Johnston
 
An Outstanding novel about the American Transport Command that will take its place beside the most memorable fiction of World War II.

The pilots who flew "The Hump" were in many ways the war's greatest unsung heroes.

Their job was to carry materials from Assam into beleaguered China; their enemies were the weather and the thrusting peaks of the Himalayas rather than the obviously dramatic risks of Japanese Zeros.

Nonetheless, during the season of the monsoon, theirs was a more terrifying uncertainty than any faced by pilots in active combat. The jockeyed their planes through dark, swirling mists and jagged canyons groping for a path to ferry cargoes of high-octane gasoline.

The specific action of this novel concerns the impact of a traveling group of entertainers upon the men of the ATC stationed at a jungle base camp known as Kansas in Zone Q4. The unexpected intrusion of any woman into that all male preserve would have been startling enough, but the fact that it was Jane Carson, Hollywood's most famous sex symbol, accentuated and prolonged the shock. Only one man remained aloof--Jacob Strickland, a Britisher whose intent, aside from winning the war, was involvement...

But as pressures built (not only was the senator of an investigating subcommittee one of the guests, but also and irresponsible and insufferable actor guaranteed to inflame the smoldering situation), Strickland found that the Olympian view was impossible to maintain, and that one his defenses were down he was as vulnerable as all mortals.

Meanwhile there is the constant obbligato of planes throbbing overhead, the punctuation of an explosion following a take-off or landing in the steady, torrential rain...
 
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
316 pages
In Good condition