This is the story of PFC Raymond Oblinger, an American replacement soldier in the U.S. Army in WWII. Part One takes the reader through the vigorous infantry training in the US, across the Atlantic and into the well-organized replacement system and ultimately into a cold, damp foxhole in France where Ray experienced his baptism of fire in the form of incoming enemy mortar fire.Part Two covers Rays next 5 months in combat with the US 26th Infantry Division in the campaigns of Lorraine in northern France, the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge), and the Rhineland. Part Three moves through the US Armys medical care in Europe, and the vast demobilization process. Ray and the reader are finally brought homeward bound and given an Honorable Discharge where Life After Olive Drab is lived until Rays death in 1985. The reader will experience not only the horrors and hardships of war, but also the occasional humor in it.

This is the story of PFC Raymond Oblinger, an American replacement soldier in the U.S. Army in WWII. Part One takes the reader through the vigorous infantry training in the US, across the Atlantic and into the well-organized replacement system and ultimately into a cold, damp foxhole in France where Ray experienced his baptism of fire in the form of incoming enemy mortar fire.Part Two covers Rays next 5 months in combat with the US 26th Infantry Division in the campaigns of Lorraine in northern France, the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge), and the Rhineland. Part Three moves through the US Armys medical care in Europe, and the vast demobilization process. Ray and the reader are finally brought homeward bound and given an Honorable Discharge where Life After Olive Drab is lived until Rays death in 1985. The reader will experience not only the horrors and hardships of war, but also the occasional humor in it.