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Shop nowOnce an Eagle
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Learn moreOnce an Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self-interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances his career by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington’s corridors of power.
Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War—Vietnam.
A study in character and values, courage, nobility, honesty, and selflessness, here is an unforgettable story about a man who embodies the best in our nation—and in us all.
Anton Myrer (1922–1996) enlisted in the US Marine Corps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and served for three years in the Pacific. Wounded on Guam, he returned to Harvard, graduated, and began an illustrious literary career, during which he wrote such memorable novels as The Big War, The Last Convertible, and A Green Desire.
Read by Grover Gardner, Simon Vance, Derek Perkins, Julie McKay, James Langton, Marisa Calin, Ralph Lister, Suzanne Elise Freeman, James Patrick Cronin, Andrew Eiden, Scott Brick, Emily Sutton-Smith, Keith Szarabajka, and Justine Eyre
Reviews
“A remarkable novel…Utterly engrossing. Myrer is a superb storyteller, one of the few gifted novelists now writing who cares about the art of narration and is a master of it…A grim, exciting, and almost overwhelming account of twentieth-century war. It is an astute study of the mind and character of a good general and a good man. And it is a brilliant inside views of the life of a career officer in peace and war.”
“An ambitious, magnificently vivid novel…Compelling. The battle scenes are among the finest I have ever read.”
“At long last we have what critics have been saying was lost to modern novels—an honest-to-God hero…A natural.”
“I fully understand why Once an Eagle has become a classic novel of war and warriors. Sam Damon doesn’t preach, he lives his values, and they are universal not only military.”
“The work of a man who has thought long and hard about the nature of war and has come up with something more than the simple truism that it’s hell.”
“In ironic contrast, the story moves from jungle warfare to drawing rooms on the Potomac, and back again…Goes to the heart of our century.”
“Reflects skillful research in military areas as well as technical mastery of the writing craft…Through the gentle but courageous character of Damon, Myrer graphically describes the criminal, dirty, wasteful, savage immorality of war…The army career man will look on it as a monument.”
“Once an Eagle may be America’s War and Peace and Anton Myrer a contemporary Tolstoy.”
“Once an Eagle deserves to rank with, or perhaps above, any one of those three truly great pieces of military fiction—Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage; Fix Bayonets! by Col. John W. Thomason, USMC; and What Price Glory, by Capt. Lawrence Stallings, USMC.”
“The most outstanding novel I have seen in long years. And it is far and away the best work of fiction with a military background I have ever read.”
“Inspects down to their most elusive motives those who have to make the agonizing command decisions.”
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