Guard of Honor

Guard of Honor

Hardback first edition
Author	James Gould Cozzens
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Harcourt, Brace and Company
Publication date	1948
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Preceded by	The Just and the Unjust
Followed by	By Love Possessed

Guard of Honor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by James Gould Cozzens published during 1948. The novel is set during World War II, with most of the action occurring on or near a fictional Army Air Forces base in central Florida. The action occurs during a period of approximately 48 hours. The novel is chapterless in form, using three progressively longer parts entitled "Thursday", "Friday" and "Saturday". From dates on various memoranda quoted, the story takes place on September 2, 3, and 4, 1943.

Before entering the USAAF during 1943, Cozzens had already published 10 novels; his duties included writing speeches and articles for Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the USAAF. Cozzens worked in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press (like his Guard of Honor character Nathaniel Hicks, Cozzens' first duty was revising field manuals). One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens’ job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to Arnold.

One such incident occurred during April 1945: African-American officers protested the segregation of officer club facilities in what became known as the Freeman Field Mutiny. Cozzens included a fictional but similar incident in Guard of Honor, not as a dramatic recreation of the incident but as backdrop for his analysis of the relationship between fate and the character and personality of leaders. Although several African-American characters appear in Guard of Honor, none are point-of-view figures.

Guard was one of Cozzens' "professional novels", in which he drew detailed portraits of individuals, centering on their professional lives and the details of their work. He expertly recreates the feel of the stateside Army Air Forces, accurately recalls historical facts pertinent to the story line without becoming academic, and references airplanes and technical aspects without excessive explanation and without bogging down the action. All characters in the novel, except Nathaniel Hicks, are named throughout using their rank or title and last name.

The novel begins with seven characters flying to Ocanara Army Air Base, Florida, after a daylong visit to Sellers Field, Mississippi, aboard an AT-7 navigation trainer. It concerns the activities of a fictional administrative command named Army Air Forces Operations and Requirements Analysis Division, acronymed AFORAD. This organization is a fictional amalgamation of its real-life counterparts, the office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff for Operations, Commitments, and Requirements (OC&R) and the organizations in Florida that OC&R supervised, the Army Air Forces Tactical Center (AAFTAC), and the Army Air Forces Board.