THE STRAITS OF MESSINA

Johannes Steinhoff writes of great events with epic simplicity; the narrative follows him through eight crucial days in the struggle for Sicily -- locked in combat with the RAF, drinking in the evenings with his men in their bomb-proof grotto, coping with the hysterical commands reaching him intermittently from Goring -- and it lingers on his revealing descriptions of the German fighter pilot and his Messerschmitt 109 in the days when both were worthy opponents for any enemy.