The Blogger says: I should have named the four books that make up this series of war novels the "Pinch & Cassidy Novels." I never expected two minor characters in the first novel – Ghost Soldiers – to come to be the characters bearing the fullest meaning of all the books across the whole series. Or to infuse their spirit into the fifth and last book meant for younger readers.

Lieutenant Jack Pinch and Lieutenant (later Captain) Mortimer Oomes Cassidy infiltrated every story in the series and I could not keep them out. Sometimes they slinked into the background of a story. Sometimes they muscled into the foreground. But each time they shouted out the truth about war's stark meaning and how young soldiers come to behave in combat. And how those soldiers and those who love them manage to survive after war.

Cassidy is a monster but also human. Pinch is a hero but also human. Between them, they show war's effects on two men who struggle to be honest with themselves in war monstrous, heroic and too human.

If I had to do it over again, I would call this series Combat Masterpieces for the legacy left by Pinch and Cassidy and many more like them.