I hope you'll join me this coming week on Wednesday September 1st, for Point of the Spear with Robert Child, when my guest will be author Bob Welch. Bob is the author of Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers." 

His latest book is Saving My Enemy: How Two WWII Soldiers Fought Against Each Other and Later Forged a Friendship That Saved Their Lives. Don Malarkey grew up scrappy and happy in Astoria, Oregon—jumping off roofs, playing pranks, a free-range American. Fritz Engelbert's German boyhood couldn't have been more different. Regimented and indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth, he was introspective and a loner. Both men fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the horrific climax of World War II in Europe. A paratrooper in the U.S. Army, Malarkey served a longer continuous stretch on the bloody front lines than any man in Easy Company. Though he never killed an enemy soldier, Engelbert spent decades wracked by guilt over his participation in the Nazi war effort. On the sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge, these two survivors met. Malarkey was a celebrity featured in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, while Engelbert had passed the years in the obscurity of a remote German village. But both men were still scarred— haunted—by nightmares of war. And finally, after they met, they were able to save each other's lives.