Sadly out of print for years — and I’m sorry to say it sat on my shelf for so long before I finished it, I no longer remember where I bought it — I found much to admire in this set of essays. McConkey has that rare quality: reverence. But what he does repeatedly through the book is humanize people, even immensely unlikeable ones. Here’s a passage from his World War Two experience on a mail orderly:

“He had no friends and apparently desired none. The platoon thought him a sadist. Both in training camp and abroad he would postpone as long as possible the distribution of mail. Finally he would climb upon a table or file case and cry imperiously for silence. He dispensed the letters with a flourish, as if each were a token of his personal largess. If a soldier became angry at his tyrannical slowness, he was apt to leave his perch for an hour or so, taking all the mail with him; and he was known to have withheld letters for several days from any person who displeased him. His platoon wished to murder him; he was beaten up on at least one occasion. In eastern France he appeared late one night during a snowstorm at divisional headquarters, to which I had been transferred, to pick up some packages – a task anybody else would have delayed until the following morning. We saw him suddenly fall to the ground, threshing in helpless convulsions, his little packages skittering over the snow. A medic wedged open his mouth to keep him from biting off his tongue. The mail orderly had managed to conceal until that moment the fact that he was an epileptic. Afterwards, in tears, he begged that he be permitted to remain overseas with his buddies, to whom he thought himself of use; but he was immediately shipped home. I never heard of him again.”