From the dust jacket:

On 3 May, 1992, for the first time, I left an interesting movie before it ended. In the movie A Midnight Clear a squad of war weary Germans is trying to surrender during the Christmas season of 1944. I left after the soldiers sang Christmas carols around a tree in the forest with potatoes and hand grenades for ornaments. The audience knew the old jerry and the very young Jerry would never successfully surrender. I left because it was much too close to my own experience as a 19 year old.

I recalled the officer who bragged of shooting prisoners one by one because his men didn't want to obey his order to kill them. The fighting was heavy and the Americans couldn't be bothered with prisoners.

It also reminded me of the 16 exhausted Jerries I captured. (see pg. 79) All they said was "Kamrad" and "Deutschland Kaputt" and the only things they lost were a cheap watch and a ruksack - now inmmy attic. Even the feared Gurkhas, whose buddy they'd killed just an hour earlier, and whose rifle I'd "borrowed" to make the capture, bore no grudge.