ONE STORY FROM A COLLAGE OF THOUSANDSThe weapons are silent, defensive balloons float aimlessly over the beach, and bodies are still being buried as Rube Goldfarb reaches the apex of the cliffs overlooking a D-Day landing site. The twenty-two-year-old army medic could only marvel at the accomplishments of the GIs who landed five weeks earlier.

Scared and unprepared for combat, Rube hoped his medical training at Walter Reed hospital would be sufficient to keep him alive. It didn’t take long for the young soldier to understand the World War II battlefield was now his classroom—and the teachers were both his buddies and his enemies.

No one had to tell him, “War is hell,” as he lived it daily. Barely surviving battles in the hedgerows of France, the medic joins the Allied advance toward the port city of Brest, where he learns the meaning of kill or be killed.

Rube’s military journey becomes intertwined with a mixing bowl of people including his fellow soldiers, a major league baseball rookie, a talented nurse who plays chess, and an adventurous photographer. He writes letters to his, not forgotten, girlfriend, family, and an admiring pen pal.

But the war also forces the medic to deal with the inescapable realities of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia. Never wavering, Rube, wearing the uniform of the United States Army, fights to the end.

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