Beach Red Author:Peter Bowman "In Beach Red Sergeant Peter Bowman has established a literary beachhead. His brief (122-page) book, is the first novel by a combat author to describe the seizure of a Pacific island from the Japanese. It is the first time that such an action has been narrated in a medium which looks like unrhymed verse but which Author Bowman stoutly insis... more »ts is sprung prose. Prose or verse, it is the best form in which to tell Peter Bowman's story - the thoughts that pass through a soldier's head during one hour of battle. Most of Beach Red describes the painful advance of a four-man reconnaissance patrol toward the Japanese lines, their fear, their comradeship, their gallantry, their courage, and the thoughts that stream through the mind of the narrator (the only remaining member of the patrol) as he himself lies wounded. In the traditional sense Beach Red is scarcely a novel at all. It is a prime cut of human suffering. But as an attempt to put in a fresh form an ageless experience (war), and as a clue to what soldiers think in battle and even what they are thinking in peace, it is as hot as a shell fragment and worth careful inspection." Time Magazine, Monday, Dec. 10, 1945« less