Men at Arnhem
When Men at Arnhem was first published in 1976 the author modestly concealed his identity behind a pseudonym and changed the names of his comrades in arms. But the book was at once recognized as one of the finest evocations of an infantryman's war ever written, and those in the know were quick to identify the author. His cover long since blown, in this edition Geoffrey Powell adds an introduction in which he identifies the men who fought with him in those eight terrible days at Arnhem in September 1944.
The book cannot be said to be a military history in the strictest sense, even the units involved being unidentified, but the events described are, as the author also points out in his introduction, as nearly accurate as memory allowed after a lapse of over thirty years. It is unlikely ever to be surpassed as the most vivid first-hand account of one of those epic disasters which we British, in our paradoxical way, seem to cherish above and beyond the most glorious victories.