Book excerpt: In the face of the massive publicity accorded to General Montgomery and his adversary, General Erwin Rommel, and bearing in mind the endless controversy that has raged over the dismissal by Mr Churchill of Generals Wavell and Auchinleck, it is easy to forget that the war in North Africa would have run a very different course had it not been for the part played by the Royal Air Force. During those long months when the men on the ground went back and forth across the desert in a dizzying succession of triumphs and reverses the men of the Royal Air Force, often woefully under-equipped, struggled valiantly to deep possession of the skies under which the troops were fighting. Richard Bickers, author of several books on the history of the aerial warfare, saw the war in North Africa and Italy from both the ground and the air, and uses his own experiences, interwoven with the recollections of numerous contemporaries, to create a vivid picture of what it was like to fly, to fight and to control operations over the desert at that time. He also gives the usually ignored ground crews the full measure of the recognition due to them - ground gunners, armourers, motor transport drivers and others.