Young Arthur Kinsella is drafted in 1942, ripped from his family and loved ones and sent for an extended European whirlwind trip through Sicily, Italy, Southern and eastern France, the Low Countries, and Germany during 1943,44, and 45. His story is an epistolary look at war based upon nearly two hundred letters Kinsella wrote to his sweetheart back home. The letters reveal frustration, resignation, love, passion, homesickness, depression; fun and games during war time; recurring malaria and a Purple Heart wound; frank discussions about army life, the horrors of war, and the strain of more than 400 days in combat. He recounts nerdy adventures such as tossing a famed German baroness from her castle and banging out "Chopsticks" on her concert grand piano, smuggling home bolts of German parachute silk, traveling with a clandestine darkroom and sending home photos of a German atrocity, and lusting after Lauren Bacall. "I want like the dickens to come home to you, and yet I'd kick myself if I had ever missed this," he wrote.
