Phibbs, a combat surgeon, entered the fighting in November 1944, in the battle for Alsace-Lorraine, and when his unit - Combat Command B, Twelfth Armored Division, Seventh U.S. Army - invaded Germany, it was the lead point of the southern branch of the Allied pincer. By the time they hit Ansbach, his was the Allied unit farthest east on the German Front, and they stayed on the point, fighting constantly, until the end of the war. Phibbs writes of rescuing injured men from the battlefield and of interrogating POWs and collaborators. He exposes the incompetence fo Army bureaucrats and officers whose decisions often resulted in needless deaths. And he unforgettably describes being among the first Americans to enter typhus-ravaged Dachau. -- From the publisher.