If you, like me, have been reared on tales of the second World War as the just and virtuous struggle of the "greatest generation", Evelyn Waugh's arch novels (based loosely on his own war experiences) are an important and darkly enjoyable filling out of that two-dimensional view. The stakes here are still high. But the inevitable absurdities and inhumanities of a huge bureaucracy trying to lurch itself into action is here too. As the first novel of the Sword of Honor trilogy nears its climax, officers in the regiment are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for property rights over a portable Victorian chemical toilet while (as Waugh notes several times through the book) "Far away, trains rolled to the east with their innocent cargo."