The Soldier is a novel, by Richard P. Powell

Richard P. Powell

Richard Pitts Powell was an American novelist.-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Powell graduated from Princeton University in 1930 then worked at the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger newspaper. After ten years, he joined the advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son. Following service...

. It was first published in 1960 by Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...

, and later serialized in The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

. It came out as a Bantam paperback

Bantam Books

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...

 in 1962.

The scene of the novel is "an imaginary area of the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre in late 1942 and early 1943". Lieutenant Colonel William A. Farralon starts the book as a washed up officer being transferred to an unimportant post. Fate and good soldiering put his career back on track. He becomes a General

General

A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

, and gets the girl.