Once an Eagle

By Anton Myrer

This epic tale of war and warriors was both a critical and popular success. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, on the New York Times best-seller list, and internationally acclaimed. After it appeared as an NBC 12-hour miniseries it repeated as No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in 1979. It has been published in 19 languages.

ONCE AN EAGLE is the dramatic story of the making of a very special soldier--Sam Damon, and his relationship with a fellow officer, Courtney Massengale. The conflict between the two men is joined against the carnage, the mud, and the misery of the Argonne; intensifies in the isolated garrison life between the wars and in the Pacific jungles of World War 1; and ominously climaxes in the last major battle of the Cold War--Vietnam.

No novel has explored with such fidelity, scope, and depth the Americans who make war and peace. No narrative has presented with such authenticity the power, compassion, raging fear, pain and the terrible price of combat. This classic novel canvasses in depth those unique characteristics of military leadership in a representative democracy that have escaped examination elsewhere. ONCE AN EAGLE is more than a powerful study of combat; it is a narrative of change and the challenge of change to the enduring values that have guided the American military professional from 1776. We cannot all be Sam Damons, but we can all try.