Shaw wrote over eighty short stories, sixty-three of which are included in this collection written between 1937 and 1978. The stories chronicle the career of a generation from struggling adolescence during the Depression to uneasy maturity in the 1970s. They depict a generation that is never able to relax its vigilance or take things for granted. These stories portray the literal and metaphorical battles this generation fought.
The literal battlefield is Europe in the 1940s. Typical of Shaw's wartime tales is the poignant "Walking Wounded" which recounts the plight of Peter, a British soldier, who cannot, after two years at the front, remember what his wife looks like. Although he finds a friendly pilot willing to take him home, he cannot find his commanding officer.
Without orders he cannot leave. Bureaucratic red tape triumphs......
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