THE DAMNED WEAR WINGS.

By DavidM. Camerer '57. New York: Doubleday,1958. 263 pp. $3.95.

Dave Camerer is one of the few who were in the Air Force, relatively speaking, who, as a professional writer, is able to put some of his experiences and reflections on war into a novel and get it published. I congratulate him.

Mr. Camerer spent about two years in Italy with the Fifteenth Air Force whose main mission, so far as this story goes, is to bomb the oil tanks and destroy the oil reserves at Ploesti. No milk run, believe me.

In describing the inevitability, the tension, the surface bravado necessary to keep one going day after day, week after week, month after month, in a dangerous zone, Mr. Camerer does very well indeed.

The story deals with Colonel Roy.son who finds in death salvation from fear; there is the popular Mike Sawyer who has to die at the end to give the book added poignancy. (I feel, however, that, if Mike Sawyer had lived the story would have, in fact, gained force.) There is the man, closest perhaps to the author himself, doomed to stay on the ground briefing the crews he feels he should fly with. There are two sexy women, one an American and one an Italian, who add the feminine interest apparently necessary in a modern war novel.

In conclusion let me say that in the frenetic atmosphere of an air base, in the lingo, and in certain characters such as "The Wheel," Mr. Camerer is excellent.