There’s palpable peril in the squadron’s ever-mounting bombing runs, and Cathcart’s moving target of a mission quota makes a clever parallel to contemporary America’s Forever War, but the flight sequences wind up acquiring a deadening repetitiousness

Once some bandy-legged, lurching creature, an ant-eater or a bear, scuttled clumsily amid the shadows.

a rush job

It takes from our achievements[…]/ The pith and marrow of our attribute.