He expertly recreates the feel of the stateside Army Air Forces, accurately recalls historical facts pertinent to the story line without becoming academic, and references airplanes and technical aspects without excessive explanation and without bogging down the action.

The novel begins with seven characters flying to Ocanara Army Air Base, Florida, after a daylong visit to Sellers Field, Mississippi, aboard an AT-7 navigation trainer.

The beginning segment, the shortest of the novel, introduces the major characters and their traits by examining their reactions to a minor subplot of the handling of the querulous base commander at Sellers Field: an old Regular Army colonel who is an alcoholic.

Two memoranda foreshadow major incidents in the storyline: the arrival of officers of Project 0-336-3, a group of African-American pilots slated to form a bombardment squadron; and an ever-expanding grandiose plan by another problem colonel (this one General Beal's own Executive Officer) to hold a surprise birthday parade ceremony for General Beal on Saturday using numerous military aircraft and troops in a flyover.

The opening segment ends when the general's AT-7, in the midst of the harrowingly described turbulence of a nighttime thunderstorm, barely avoids a mid-air collision with a B-26 bomber landing at Ocanara.

Guard of Honor then begins to examine the motivations behind and interlocking effects of these problems (and those of a tragic accident yet to come) on General Beal, Colonel Ross, and Nathaniel Hicks as each tries to juggle his part in them with as little consequence as possible while still "doing the right thing."

In 1979 critic Raymond J. Wilson noted similarities between Guard of Honor and Gravity's Rainbow and suggested that Thomas Pynchon had been influenced by Cozzens's novel.