In 1945 WALTER D. EDMONDS, the author of Rome Haul and Drums Along the Mohawk, received the assignment to write the valiant story of the American Air Force in the Philippines in the first year of the war. He interviewed some eighty of the pilots and ground officers who survived; he visited Manila in the spring of ‘45. He checked his source material against the official records, and his chronicle They Fought with What They Had, the first volume of which will be published in September, is an inspiring story of American courage. From it, we have selected the most crucial single episode, the first Japanese attack on the airfields north of Manila.