MEDIC: LIFE AND DEATH IN , THE

In 1944,eighteen-year-old university student Leo Litwak finds himself in the middle of the waning European war,a medic trained to save lives but often powerless to do much more than watch life slip away.instead of a rifle he carries bandages, sulfa powder, morphine_and only a red cross to protect him.This is the true story of real people in war _friende and thieves,dreamers and killers,jokers and heroes_as wellas theper-sonal account of a young American plucked from a sheltered,comfort-asble 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.