To discover the grandfather he never knew, Jeff Badger began tracking down dozens of World War II veterans from the 978th Engineer Maintenance Company, his granddad’s unit. Through his new “war buddies,” some who told him stories they had never shared before, Jeff began to reconstruct both a life and a very personal vision of a war and the men who fought it.

Some stories were funny: tales of brothels, brawls, and bank robberies. Some were painful: the death of a best friend; building a