High-Echelon Follies

COMMAND DECISION (258 pp.]--William Wister Haines -- Little, Brown ($2.50).

Heroes in war novels usually wear an enlisted man's stripes, sometimes bars, rarely anything as awesome as an oak leaf. But the hero of this fast-moving, funny, occasionally angry yarn wears a general's star. Earnest, hard-working Brigadier General K. C. Dennis, who commands the 5th U.S. Bombardment Division, is worried about a new super-secret jet plane which the Nazis are about to put into production. He knows where its factories are hidden, also that his 6-175 could blast them sky-high were they given a chance. But the factories are deep inside Germany, far beyond fighter-escort range. To bomb them out will be near murder for the bombers, both going and coming.

"Casey" anxiously weighs the probable great losses against the potential great gains, then makes his command decision. Forty planes and 400 men are missing on the first raid. About the time he gets the bad news, along comes the Old Man himself, with a delegation of junketing Congressmen. The Old Man, famed Major General Kane, is so unnerved by circumstances that he almost forgets to put out his well-known jaw for photographers. A noisy Southern Congressman in yellow shoes, lavender shirt and white felt hat is highly indignant at the losses.

In the end Casey Dennis is made the goat, although he has done only what appeared to him to be his duty. Old A.A.F. hands may think they recognize certain incidents and characters in Command Decision, but Novelist William Wister Haines (Slim, High Tension) says in the customary solemn foreword that they are all dreamed up. An old A.A.F. hand him self, he was long enough (33 months) at Eighth Air Force and Strategic Air Forces headquarters to learn something of the woes of staff and command. His story is a little stagey here & there (the entrances & exits are particularly pat), but it is managed throughout with a nice mixture of sympathy and fury, and an expert's knowledge of high-echelon follies and low-echelon speech.

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