Guard of Honor is a 1948 novel by James Gould Cozzens.
It takes place over three days—a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in September 1943—on an Army Air Forces base in Florida. World War II is raging, but while the Allies have just landed in Italy and are gearing up for the battle of Tarawa in the Pacific, the Ocanara AAF base is a sleepy backwater on the home front. Over the course of three days, various interpersonal conflicts occur and Army bureaucracy struggles to handle events. One running theme is racism and segregation in the military, as shown when a group of Black pilots newly assigned to Ocanara attempt to forcibly integrate the officer's club. Another incident later in the novel involves a military parade and a training paratrooper drop, which goes horribly wrong.
Two characters carry the bulk of the POV in the novel, and both are civilians who joined up for the war rather than career military men. Col. Norman Ross was a judge, but also a National Guard reservist who volunteered for active duty at the start of the war. Captain Nathaniel Hicks was a magazine editor in civilian life who is revising a manual on fighter tactics, and has also been assigned a PR project.
Among the people they observe is Ocanara commander General Ira "Bus" Beal, a 41-year-old hotshot flyboy who is more comfortable behind the controls of a plane than commanding a whole base. (Colonel Ross is his unofficial executive officer.) Col. Mowbray is Beal's actual executive officer, 60 years old, none too bright, and extremely racist. Lt. Col. Benny Carricker is a highly skilled pilot and a good friend of Beal's who is something of a cowboy and also very racist, and who causes all sorts of problems when he punches a Black pilot in the face. Lt. Edsell is a junior officer who has very progressive, enlightened views on race relations, but actually cares more about mocking and insulting his superiors than he does for changing minds. There's also a large WAC contingent at Ocanara, which includes Lt. Amanda Turck, who winds up pouring her heart out to Capt. Hicks.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: The novel opens with Bus returning to Ocanara after going to Sellers Field for an unsatisfactory interview with Col. Woodman, the Sellers Field commander and a failed officer with a severe drinking problem. "Woody" hides liquor in his office and is drunk when Bus comes to meet him.
- An Arm and a Leg: Capt. Hicks helps Major Post, who lost his left arm in combat, take off an artifical limb.
- Author Avatar: Capt. Hicks is an avatar for James Gould Cozzens. Cozzens, like Hicks, was a writer who was tasked with rewriting flight manuals. Cozzens, like Hicks, did publicity for senior officers (Cozzens worked for Henry "Hap" Arnold, commander of the Army Air Force).
- Band of Brothers: This exact phrase is used in one of Col. Ross's POV sequences, in a scene where Col. Ross ponders how he doesn't believe in all the talk about the Army as a band of brothers fighting for high ideals. Ross thinks that most soldiers are in the Army against their will and want nothing more than to go home and require a high degree of indoctrination.
- The Beard: Lt. Turck, her tongue loosened by alcohol, makes an embarrassed confession to Capt. Hicks. She dropped out of medical school and agreed to marry a gay med student who wanted to avoid attention.
- Buzzing the Deck: Gen. Beal shows some racism of his own when he tells a story about how one of his men "buzzed the n***r picnic" and scared some "colored women." He can't help but be proud of his pilot's skill.
- Catapult Nightmare: Lt. Turck has a nightmare about finding a snake in the barracks. When she's woken up by the reveille bugle, "The convulsive start of waking left Amanda Turck sitting on her cot, bugle notes ringing in her ears."
- Cigarette of Anxiety: "His hand was not too steady" as Lt. Col. Carricker tries to light and smoke a cigarette. Benny is worried about the prospect of facing a court martial for punching Lt. Willis.
- Curse Cut Short: Major Post, as he struggles to take off his artificial left arm, says "Rest of the time I'd like to shove it up the Flight Surgeon's—".
- Dramatic Thunder: There is lightning and thunder in the dramatic early scene where General Beal, already making a difficult landing in the storm, nearly collides with a B-26 pilot landing at the same time. (Eventually it's revealed that the B-26 had a busted radio and could not communicate with the control tower.)
- Driven to Suicide: Col. Woodman, the morose alcoholic failed officer in command of Sellers Field, killed himself soon after General Beal and company left. General Beal is very upset to hear about this.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Three days in the life of an AAF base.
- Flashback: Col. Ross's mind wanders while he's on the parade reviewing stand, and he starts thinking about old Judge Schlichter, whom Ross clerked for decades ago when he was a young lawyer. Judge Schlichter had a habit of dropping Shakespeare and Milton quotes that made all the other young lawyers at court roll their eyes.
- Full-Name Basis: Oddly, in the passages from the POV of Captain Hicks, he is always, always referred to as "Nathaniel Hicks". Never "Hicks" or "Captain Hicks".
- Hot Librarian: Capt. Hicks can't help but notice Lt. Turck's "good figure and thin, fine textured skin", and her full lips. He then remembers that she was a librarian in civilian life.
- Intro Dump: Many of the main characters in the novel—Beal, Carricker, Ross, Hicks, and Turck—are introduced in the first three pages of the novel, as they are all on the same plane flying in to Ocanara.
- It's Raining Men: Goes horribly wrong. A parachute drop, part of the parade for Gen. Beal's birthday, is delayed when there's a mechanical problem aboard one of the planes. As a result that plane's paratroopers jump too late and they miss the sandy field where they were supposed to land. One lands on the concrete runway in front of Capt. Hicks and breaks his leg. Worse, seven paratroopers land in the lake. Weighed down by their gear, they all drown.
- Lingerie Scene: Gen. Beal's younger, high-spirited wife Sal runs around at breakfast wearing only a negligee. Mr. Botwinnick, who is there to speak to the general, desperately averts his eyes.
- The Load: Col. Mowbray, a dimwitted old coot who is also a huge racist and who generally makes everything worse. It's Mowbray who specifically ordered the officer's club to be segregated, even though Army regulations specifically state that O-clubs should be open to all officers (most of the military was still segregated at this time). It's Mowbray who overreacts when the Black reporter shows up at Ocanara, kicking him off the base and causing another embarrassing incident. And it's Mowbray who failed to act on the memo about the inoperable rescue boat, which causes further embarrassment to the command when seven paratroopers drown in the lake.
- Match Cut: A literary one. Hicks and Turck's alcohol-fueled emotional chat ends with them embracing passionately. They're about to have sex, and she says "But could you put that light out first?" Cut to General Beal, in his office, telling one of his junior officers "Put that light out if you like, Collins. Right by the door."
- Narrative Profanity Filter: Under a bulletin-board acronym that said "WEFT", someone wrote "Wrong every time", leaving out the F.
- Nose Art: Col. Ross sees an attack bomber with a nose art drawing of a skeleton dancing with a nude woman. The irony here is that Col. Ross is looking at a wreck, the bomber having crashed, killing both pilot and radio man.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The last paragraph has Col. Ross watching the plane carrying Capt. Hicks to New York, as it takes off and flies away until he can no longer make it out from among the stars.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Col. Ross observes the sweat "beading on Mr. Botwinnick's forehead" as Botwinnick confesses to inadvertently destroying the memo about the inoperable rescue boat. In fact, Mr. Botwinnick is lying, in an attempt to cover for his boss Col. Mowbray, who ignored the memo.
- The Peeping Tom: Capt. Burton complains about her WAC enlisted personnel getting peeped on by male enlisted personnel as they undress for physical exams.
- Racist Grandma: A male version in the person of Col. Mowbray, who, when pushed about his order to make the officers' club whites-only, drops the veneer of Army bureaucracy and goes on a rant about how blacks are inferior and should never have been allowed to be pilots.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The plot thread about the Black pilots forcing their way into the segregated officer's club was inspired by the Freeman Field mutiny
, a real-life event in which just that happened. In this story Col. Ross manages to sweep everything under the rug, while in Real Life the Freeman Field incident resulted in a couple of court martials and many letters of reprimand. - Something Else Also Rises: Or maybe not. General Beal's negligee-clad wife Sal jumps into his arms and starts kissing him. Col. Ross and Mr. Botwinnick, embarrassed, look away. They both notice the "shining metal staff" on the general's car. However, the flag on that staff "hung limp."
- Stocking Filler: Nathaniel Hicks is helping Lt. Turck up onto the reviewing platform for the parade, when her skirt rides up and he gets an eyeful of her stocking and garter belt. This foreshadows the sex between them near the end of the book.
- Title Drop: Near the end. The officers are discussing transporting Col. Woodman's body. Gen. Beal, who knew Woodman and is upset over his suicide, says he doesn't know what good a "guard of honor" will do for Col. Woodman now that he's dead. Col. Ross answers back that the guard of honor isn't for Woodman, not really; it's for everybody else, the living, as a mark of their respect for service.
- War Is Glorious: Col. Ross ponders Gen. Beal the natural-born fighter pilot, who served in the North African campaign before being sent to Ocanara. He imagines that Beal "must have felt like singing" as he flew through the sky with a whole fighter squadron behind him, despite his personal knowledge (Beal previously fought in the disastrous Philippines campaign) that War Is Hell.
- Who Watches the Watchmen?: On the next-to-last page, Gen. Beal asks Col. Ross to "pick up after Pop," that is, look after the mistake-prone, dumb Col. Mowbray. Col. Ross, amused, quotes the Latin, "sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes." When the less bookish Gen. Beal asks what that means, Col. Ross wonders "who's going to pick up after me?"
