FROM THE PUBLISHER

First in the author's five-volume series The Corps, SEMPER FI sets the stage for WW II. It is the '30s, and we meet the old corps, as it existed between WW I and WW II -- on station in Shanghai, at Quantico, in Washington, all nicely contrasted with civilian life stateside.

But the calendar is moving relentlessly toward a fatal day in 1941. When it comes, we understand why nothing could ever be the same again -- and what it's going to take to win the awful conflict into which we have been bloodily and unpreparedly thrust.