The 20 stories of personal heroism collected here include the tale of the military padre who dug up the corpse of an “unknown soldier” in order to send fingerprints to the appropriate authorities. There is also the story of John Hoare and Frank Furlong, who ditched their airplane in the Atlantic Ocean while on a mission to bomb the Bismarck, one of the Nazis’ fiercest battleships. Hoare and Furlong floated in their inflatable raft in a freezing sea for more than 24 hours before they were rescued by an Allied ship that was itself over 100 miles off course.