Condition: Acceptable. Please see the images for more details. May show signs of wear such as:
• Shelf wear or scuffing on the cover
• Creases, marks, or tears on pages or dust jacket
• Possible remainder marks or previous owner’s name/notes inside
Cover art:
Blurb: “Here is a narrative of men and events in the British Army and the R.A.F. during ten extended tours of service in the United Kingdom, Af-rica, Asia, and on the Con-tinent.
George Stewart, at the invitation of the War Office and Air Ministry, visited more units and talked face to face with more men in His Majesty's Forces than has any other living person.
A six-months' mission to Australia at the start of World War II resulted in repeated requests to serve in a liaison capacity with the British Army and these assignments took him on long journeys to units as far removed as Scotland, Hong Kong, Malaya, India, Indo-china, Ceylon, and more!
Never in the history of the British Forces has a stranger been so received, or SO called upon for repeated terms of service.
In many Commands he was a figure as well known as any Britisher who came to interpret the course of war to the troops. In the Middle and Far East his name was a legend. He wears the highest decorations of half a dozen fighting nations.
From Field Marshals, Generals, and Air Marshals to privates and airmen, he knew the British Forces in all the nuances of waiting, retreat, and smashing vic-tory, and it may be that they will have no better friend and recorder of what they are and what they did.
The Author:
George Stewart was born into a pioneer family whose feet had pressed all the tracks and wagon trails leading to the Southwest, California, and Colorado.
His forbears in Scotland followed Bonnie Prince Charlie.
After Sulloden, for reasons of health, they crossed the Western Ocean from Blair
Atholl, in Perthshire, to New York State's Mohawk Valley, later migrating West. As a boy of fifteen George was ranching on his own in the Payette Valley in southwestern Idaho. It was out of this experience that he later wrote the novel Reluctant Soil.
Eventually he entered Yale, where he
earned his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. On the day he received his second degree, he enlisted as a private in the United States Army, later working his way up until he commanded a battalion.
In 1919 he returned to Yale, taking his Ph.D. and winning the John Addison Porter Prize, the largest award for research in the university. After graduation he entered the Presbyterian ministry, serving as an assistant in New York City for seven years and later for fifteen years as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Stamford, Connecticut. He is at present a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
Throughout his career he has had a passionate interest not only in our land, its people and its history, but also in other places beyond the sea. In over thirty trips abroad he has visited nearly every country in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia, and South America.
He has served on numerous local, national, and international boards and commissions dealing with religious and social work. In all he has written nineteen books, mostly on religious subjects, but one, an authority in its field, The White Armies of Russia, deals with the counterrevolution of 1919-20.
At the start of World War II he was called on a mission to Australia. Out of that assignment grew repeated requests to serve with the British Army and the R.A.F. In this liaison capacity he interpreted to all ranks the American scene, our history, letters, politics, religion, culture, military effort and purposes.
It is out of these experiences that he has written THESE MEN MY FRIENDS.
It may be that the historian, the sociologist, and those curious about our times, decades hence, will not go unrewarded from the reading of these pages.”