Between the reader and the looming tyrants we find portraits of those caught in the crossfire. Short digestible chapters flicker between family dining tables, prisoner of war camps and the foxhole, where Grossman, in episode after episode, sews together the banalities and the absurdities of the eastern front. "One soldier was singing; another his eyes half-closed, was full of dire foreboding; a third was thinking about home; a forth was chewing some bread and sausage and thinking about the sausage; a fifth, his mouth wide open, was trying to identify a bird on a tree."
