As bombs begin to fall on Pearl Harbor, nineteen-year-old PFC Richard Mask is wearing a pistol, a .45 caliber automatic that makes him feel connected to the army of the Wild West and Custer's Cavalry. In the chaos of his first days and weeks of the war, as Mask and his company move from Schofield Barracks to the beaches of Oahu, then to a remote mountain pass, a struggle over the pistol dominates this novella's action, providing the pathos and savagery of the story.

James Jones (1921-1977) was a nineteen-year-old private, first class, in Company F, 27th Infantry, stationed in Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was wounded in Guadalcanal in 1943 and received the bronze star and the Purple Heart. He won the National Book Award in 1951 for From Here to Eternity and is famous for his war novels, Some Came Running, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle.

— New York Times

— Newsweek

— Taliaferro Boatwright, New York Herald Tribune