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HORNED PIGEON (434 pp.)-George Millar-Doubleday...
Readers of George Millar's first book were left with two impressions: that he was one of the most promising young British writers, and that he was mighty unhappy about something. Waiting in the Night (TIME, Jan. 14) told of Millar's parachuting into France a few months before Dday, to work with the Maquis. Author Millar hinted that he had volunteered for the job because something mysterious was gnawing his heart & soul. "I wanted a useful death and then peace," he said darkly; "I was thirty-three and so unhappy...
...Almost. Millar, an armored division platoon leader, was captured in Libya in the winter of 1941-42. For the next 20 months he was a P.W. in Italy and in Germany. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, officer P.W.s may not be forced to work. Both in World War I and in World War II, hundreds of them worked like mad-digging hidden tunnels, forging counterfeit papers, tailoring civilian-like disguises, anything that might eventually help them escape...
...Campo 35, near Salerno, Millar and three others nearly succeeded. So clever was their game that they walked calmly out past the Italian comandante's office and were within reach of the open gates when they were discovered by a little Italian corporal who saw the British boots under the faked uniforms. The gates swung shut. Soldiers swarmed out of the guardhouse. The comandante himself popped to his office window, screamed as though cut to the heart, bustled into the courtyard. "Swine, filth," he yelled at the P.W.s. "seducers, whoremongers, robbers! ... I who have been so noble,, so kind...
...reason for Author Millar's undisclosed unhappiness is the subject of his next book, Horned Pigeon, which his publishers announce will appear shortly...