GOSHAWK SQUADRON. de Robinson, Derek - 1972

New York: Viking, 1972. 246 pp, 8 3/4" H. Brown cloth spine with gilt and orange lettering, orange paper-covered boards, top edge orange. Orange endpapers. "France, 1918. A cold day in January. A normal day in the Great War - about two thousand men killed along the Western Front. Behind the lines, at an isolated airfield near Pont St. Martin, Commanding Major Stanley Woolley of the Goshawk Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, addresses one of his men: "Where you in bloody control of yourself then, lawnmower?" he demands after a grueling training flight. "That's what you've got to do up there. Turn into a bloody assassin! Kill! Understand, you bastard Boy Scout? Kill!" Scruffy, boozy, obdurate, Woolley has 'a gamekeeper's manners' and a 'trade unionist voice'. He looks forty but is only twenty-three - young for a major but old for a pilot. His black pouchy eyes glazed with exhaustion, he flies the Goshawk Squadron all day, every day, driving his men with a devastating combination of flaying humor and brutality, and all the while convinced they will be dead in three months time - ." Very light browning to fore-edge of text block, minor wrinkling at bottom of spine. Dust jacket has minor edge wear, two small edge tears archivally taped, minor toning to spine.. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good.