The Medic

This is the true story of Leo Litwak, an award-winning novelist and former World War II combat medic, who in 1943 was a college student thrilled by the prospect of helping to fight what people were calling a good war. It's the story of real people in war-friends and thieves, dreamers and killers, jokers and heroes-as well as the personal account of a young American plucked from a sheltered and comfortable life and sent to a foreign land to save the men fighting to save the world. Few books have portrayed the grit and wonder of war with such eloquence, and still fewer have shown how war looks through the eyes of a soldier whose mission was saving lives, not taking them.

Leo Litwak taught English literature at San Francisco State University for more than thirty years and is the author of the novel Waiting for the News, which won the 1970 National Jewish Book Award. His short story "The Eleventh Edition" was awarded first prize in the 1990 edition of Stories: The O. Henry Awards.