In any army, it is only a minority of men who end up as combat soldiers, at the "sharp end" where they have to shoot and be shot at, but it is their experiences that are the most intense and reveal most directly what war is actually like. John Ellis has drawn together the testimony of men who fought with the British, Commonwealth, and American armies in all theaters of World War II, from Western Europe to Burma and from North Africa to the Pacific. He uses these eyewitness accounts to explain how they were trained, the different landscapes and climates in which they fought, their attitudes and aspirations, how they relaxed when they were out of the line, and, above all, how they reacted to the experience of battle.