During World War II, the American soldiers of D Company, 32nd Armored Regiment, experienced almost constant combat during a nearly ten-month 1,500-mile fight across western Europe, with many of them killed or severely wounded.

After the war, “the boys of Company D reintegrated into American society and got on with their lives. For a decade or so, they let their brotherhood become a memory, but, almost to a man, they couldn’t let it go. The loss of their brothers in arms still weighed on them even ten years later,” Nina Willner explains in her wonderful book, “The Boys In The Light.”

Fred Headrick, one of the D Company veterans, called for a reunion. It was so well attended that it became an annual event, for many decades. Once a year, the men got into their cars and drove to the hometown of whatever man was hosting the event. At the reunions, the veterans’ reflections on their wartime memories included a lot of joking, too. At one of the reunions, Headrick arrived from Chattanooga, looked around the room at the now “balding heads and ample girths,” and quipped, “Boys, I look at this bunch and it makes me wonder how we won the war.” “In the end, their reunions were mostly happy occasions when they recalled the things that made them laugh,” Willner explains. On one occasion, “Pepsi (the nickname of Sammy DeCola, the D Company cook) finally fessed up to using gun oil to cook them that memorable pancake breakfast after the Bulge” (The Battle of the Bulge). Headrick replied, “Glad we survived the war. Never mind them damn Germans. You mighta killed us all, Pepsi.”

DeCola used the gun oil only when no regular cooking oil was available. Thankfully, everyone enjoyed the pancakes with no adverse reactions.

At least one man at every reunion would inevitably ask, “Wonder whatever happened to those two Jewish boys we picked,” referring to Eddie Willner, 18, and Maurits “Mike” Swaab, 17, who had survived slave labor at Auschwitz concentration camp and elsewhere, who had escaped during a forced........

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