A collection of Steinbeck's dispatches filed for the "New York Herald Times" at the height of World War II. He begins in England, recounting the courage of the bomber crews, the tragic air-raids and the strangeness of the British, before being sent to Africa and joining a special-operations unit off the coast of Italy. Eating, drinking, talking and fighting alongside the soldiers, Steinbeck's empathy for the common man is always in evidence in these pieces, as he evokes the human side of an inhuman war.