On land, World War II provided an infinitely varied pattern of experience. An anthology of this experience is thus a distillation of what many kinds of human beings felt about what happened to them in many corners of the globe - often under stresses as great as man has endured. Their reactions were, predictably, human. So in this anthology there is humour and poetry as well as first-hand accounts of fighting in all the areas of the great campaigns: Europe, Africa, Burma. The men who worked behind or beyond the fighting fronts are also represented - the prisoners, the brothers-in-arms of the partisans, the saboteurs, the Private Armies. World War II produced an abundance of literature by eyewitnesses which, whether written at the time or in retrospect, has the stamp of truth upon it. This volume includes some of the finest examples.