And Come to Dust

A love story set in the final months of World War II. Against the backdrop of bombed, skeletal towns and cities within Germany, American GIs battle not only the tenacious enemy but personal demons, despair and the descent into madness. Defying military regulations which prohibit fraternization, Drake woos and wins Fraulein Klara, a deserter from the Wehrmacht. Drake's comrade-in-arms Trapani, an American soldier of Italian/Jewish origin, struggles with his friend's embrace of a German girl, and with his own dilemma of racial identity and Nazi atrocities. The destines of these three very young people are irrevocably - shockingly - determined amid the ravaged ruins of a Rhineland city during the final days of the war. Moving between military sites in Belgium and Germany, the story introduces many of Drake's and Trapani's comrades - most in their late teens or early twenties - from their anti-aircraft battalion. It is a tale of Boys at War, and of the grievous psychic wounds which force them to become Men or destory them. The author completed this book in 1950 while a veteran with fresh memories of the war in Europe.