Hastings was the type of man who felt that any moment in life with more than one possible outcome was an opportunity to lay some money down. He kept all his bets and their outcomes logged in a leather-bound memo book he stored in his shirt pocket. When he was wounded, he had awakened from a state of sheer unconsciousness to prevent Nick from throwing away the memo book with his bloody shirt, then had passed out again once the book was safely tucked into his belt. It was only hours later (or moments—a man could never be sure of time, in those conditions) that Nick himself was wounded. He counted himself lucky: He had already lasted a great deal longer in combat than most medics, landing at Normandy on D + 1, June 7, and pushing through France with the rest of them and into Belgium. But his wounds were not severe enough for him to be sent home; he would be sent back out to the field in a matter of weeks.

For that reason, at the time the bet was placed, the possibility of returning home at all, much less to propose to Elissa Mickelson, had seemed as remote as taking a trip to the moon. Haggling over terms had passed the time, and had taken his mind off the pain in his knee, thigh, and shoulder, where the shrapnel had gone in.

The truth was, he’d pretty near put Elissa out of his mind, until the news of the December 17 German massacre of American troops at Malmédy had spread through the ranks. Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, was lined up for surrender in a snowy field, when a German officer halted two tanks passing on the road, told them to turn their guns toward the prisoners, and then gave the order to fire. Those prisoners who weren’t killed immediately were sought out and beaten with rifle butts, shot with pistols. Only a slim few who played dead, lying in the snow, covering their faces and mouths with their arms so the steam of their breath in the cold air wouldn’t be detected, survived to tell the tale.

It made the men’s bile rise, made them want to kill. It made them determined to win. Nick was as tore up as everyone else, but, as a medic, he couldn’t kill to prove it. And only a few days later, he had ended up in the hospital with plenty of time to think.