Garret Jansen is a young introspective infantryman who has just arrived as a Replacement in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in the winter of 1945. He is assigned to the 311th Infantry Regiment of the 78th Infantry Division (aka the 78th Lightning Division). Jansen is a simple farm boy with an 8th-grade education from South Dakota who grew up during The Great Depression. What Jansen does not know is that he was about to be thrust into one of the most pivotal battles of the later stages of World War II.