DESERT EAGLES

Shrewsbury: Airlife. Very Good/Very Good. 1993. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 1853103829 pp xii 140 including index plus 12 pages of photographs and two maps in the text. Light brown cloth with bright gilt lettering on spine. Desert Eagles tells the story of two American pilots who served in P-40 Kittyhawk fighter/bomber squadrons in the desert air force in 1942 before, during and after the Battle of El Alamein. Both pilots, Hal Marting and Ed Miluck, had come to Britain in 1941 as volunteers of the American Eagle Squadrons. Both men kept diaries of their Middle Fa,,t experiences and it is on these first-hand accounts that the book is based. Hal Marting was shot down on the day the Battle of El Alamein began, captured and taken by the Germans to Athens. There he escaped and with the help of the Greek Resistance evaded recapture, being taken across the Aegean Sea to Turkey and journeying from there back to Cairo by train. The two pilots were reunited in Cairo on 31 December.1942. Marting was awarded the Military Cross in July 1943 but sadly was killed in an air crash in September 1943. Humphrey Wynn has used his own knowledge of the period to provide a background to the diary material and has produced a fascinating account of these two mens' war. .