And Save Them for Pallbearers , first published in 1958, is a gritty World War II novel centered on a platoon of U.S. GI's, fighting from D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge. Main character Sergeant Peter Donatti is wounded on an attack on the Siegfried Line, and while in an army hospital in Paris, meets nurse Lt. Abigail Winslow, and a romance develops. Although he is scheduled to return to the U.S., Donatti instead returns to his outfit. His return to the front has tragic consequences as the fierce fighting of the Battle of the Bulge is beginning, and Donetti will pay the ultimate price. From the dust jacket: "To read Peter Donatti's story is to come face to face with the taste of truth, with the deepest feelings of a man whose life was measured by the distance between him and the nearest shell burst. Indeed, to read it is to discover a truly great novel of World War II, a rare work of fiction that brings with it a profoundly honest understanding of the forces that shape the destinies of all men and women."