Samuel West talks about his life as an Afro-American in New York at the 30s and the beginning of the war. Werner Höfken talks from his Nazi Germany in Cologne. Both their youths join the training as soldiers and the war effort in foreign countries. In the winter of 1944 their fateful meeting as mortal enemies occurs during the Ardennes battle.
For the author were his experiences as a young soldier a trauma that attaches to him for a lifetime. With the books, he provides readers not heroic epic, but they are coping with the worst time of his life.