He stared desperately into the dark trying to force his eyes to see, so that they ached more than ever . . . He sensed that the eyes of men were drilling into the back of his neck, so that it felt prickly. Being lost when you are the leader is the worst thing of all. He hated them because he was lost . . . Rage and despair were welling up inside him . . . 1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, an exhausted and battle-weary infantry officer, is asked to carry out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. He'd been on many patrols, but this was to be the longest and most dangerous of all. Fred Majdalany's superb novel of the men who fought in the North African campaign puts this so-called minor mission at center stage, as over the course of the day and during the patrol itself, Sheldon looks back on his time as a soldier, considers his future, and contemplates the meaning of fear.

About the Author
Fred Majdalany (1913-1967) was an officer in the British Eighth Army during World War II. After the war he resumed his career as a theater publicist and journalist, writing for the Daily Mail and Time and Tide. He is the author of many books, including The Battle of Cassino, The Battle of El Alamein, and The Monastery, which was adapted by the BBC.

Reviews
"As a reporting of a single military action by a participant, it is compact, readable, and convincing."--Stanley Edgar Hyman "Commentary" "A tightly written novel by a man who is a full-time writer and critic, and who was a wartime combat infantryman. The combination is a particularly happy one. From a purely military point of view, [Majdalany] has given us as excellent and accurate an account of a patrol action as there is in military writing, whether fact or fiction. If that were all he had accomplished this would still be a valuable book. But he has gone a great deal beyond reporting. Majdalany is one of a bare handful of contemporary writers who can get inside the soldier's mind and then write sensibly about what he finds there. . . . The fact that Majdalany has successfully illuminated for us the workings of [the character's] mind and the limitations of his endurance mark him as both a novelist of the first rank and a student of leadership and command whose opinions deserve careful study. Patrol, in short, deserves a place in the permanent literature of war."--Orville C. Shirey "Army Combat Forces Journal"



Book Information
ISBN 9781912423156
Author Fred Majdalany
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Imperial War Museum
Publisher Imperial War Museum