Erich Loest, then just 24 years old, describes in his debut novel from 1950 the fate of young recruits who are to defend their homeland at the end of World War II, always ready to die for it. Loest, who himself was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the end of the war, tells soberly, harshly, and with a disillusioning objectivity about this generation, the children in uniform, who were ruthlessly exploited by a cynical regime. A gripping and moving piece of contemporary history.