"He was a college boy thrilled by the prospect of fighting what they were calling a good war. There were already eleven million people in the fight in the spring of 1943 when his troop train pulled out of the Detroit station. His parents watched uneasily from the platform knowing there was much to be afraid of, much more than he knew. He turned back and waved, I'll be fine, don't worry, he said. At last he had found a way to be useful, he thought. He would be a warrior.".

"Against his will they made him a medic. Instead of a rifle, they gave him bandages and gauze, sulfa powder and morphine. They trained him to save lives and ease pain and they sent him into the hot center of the war in Europe with only a red cross to protect him. Through Belgium, the Sauer River, the Moselle Valley, and Saxony, he tended to men he admired and feared. In the clash and riot of war he came to know courage, terror, brutality, humor, and grace, and at the end he was changed.".

"This is the true story of Leo Litwak, an award-winning novelist and former WWII combat medic. It's the story of real people in war: friends, saints, dreamers, thieves, jokers, killers, revolutionaries, and heroes. And it's the view in depth of a young American plucked from a cozy campus and sent to a foreign land to save the men who intended to save the world."--BOOK JACKET.