"The following memoir about my experience in World War II, written a long half-century later, particularly the 'legendary' Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and the nearly forgotten firebombing of Dresden, is not, therefore, intended to be 'objective' ... On the contrary, my memoir is frankly intended as a counter-memoir, a dissident remembrance of, a witness to, this 'just war', whose cumulative glorification has been recently reiterated ... In a way I began writing this book about my experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, on August 16, 1945 ... I knew then, that despite my will to forget what I had undergone in that brief, traumatic five-month period of my life ... I felt I had borne witness to a massive crime against humanity that no appeal to reason, not even to the saving of countless other lives, could justify"--Preface.