When Nazi Germany began bearing down on Europe in the late 1930s, Herman Bodson was a student pacifist at the University of Brussels. As the reality of eventual invasion sank into his soul, he entered the resistance and five years of dangerous work as, in his words, ""a fighter and a killer"".

This dramatic memoir traces Herman Bodson's transformation from a pacifist and scientist to, in his own words, "a cold fighter and a killer" in the Belgian underground, an expert in explosives and sabotage. Serving first in the OMBR (Office Militaire Belge de Resistance), he later formed a group of underground fighters in the Belgian Ardennes. They undertook blowing up military trains and installations - including the sabotage of a bridge which resulted in the deaths of some six hundred German soldiers - cutting German communication lines, and rescuing downed American fliers. Bodson also served as a medical aide to an American military doctor at Bastogne in the crucial days of the Battle of the Bulge.