"As a chaplain for the US Army's 102nd Evacuation Hospital in the European Theater, Renwick C. Kennedy ... witnessed great courage, extreme talent, and many lives snatched from the precipice of death ... and he also observed drug and alcohol abuse, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and chronic depression. What he saw, he chronicled in his journal ... With Kennedy's war diaries and postwar articles ... in front of him, historian Tennant McWilliams spent a year retracing every step, every turn, every location of the 102nd in wartime France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany ... [His] interviews with citizens ... who recall the 102nd, further revealed local people's reactions to the army hospital that illuminated both Kennedy's severe criticism and his enduring praise for evac life"--Jacket.

The author based the book on Rev. Kennedy's letters, war diaries, and post-war magazine articles, as well as a personal yearlong trip retracing Kennedy's war locales, including conducting interviews with local citizens about their war remembrances.

Overture: goodbye, farewell, amen -- Finding the war -- San Luis Obispo -- Goffs -- New York to Southport -- France -- Utah Beach -- Barneville-le-Carteret and Picauville -- Saint-Pair-sur-Mer -- Ploudaniel -- Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany -- Bastogne and Roumont -- Ettelbruck -- Huy and the Bulge -- Brand and Bad Neuenahr -- Final days in Europe -- Coda: "home, again" -- Commentary on sources.