Notes from a far-off war.

As a lifestyle magazine, of course, cataclysmic world events are hardly our usual focus; and in any case, our deadlines make timely reporting impossible. Yet magazines like ours are about connection and community; through art and writing, we try to find perspective and meaning in our shared experience. With that in mind, we asked contributing editor Hollis Alpert to write about war for us.

Alpert, a former editor for The New Yorker and the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, gained a rare perspective on the subject during World War II. After enlisting, he became one of a handful of officers designated as military historians. As the only historian for the 20th Army Corps of Patton's Third Army, he was with advancing forces in France and Germany. Equipped with a jeep stocked with weapons and a driver, he would go out as soon as an action was over to reconstruct what had happened. Using detailed maps, he would interview officers and collect memos-mainly phone messages or terse notes like "met resistance at group of trees"-to pinpoint every movement and development. At night, he would write reports, which would then go to Patton's headquarters-where the clerks told him they loved to get them as typing assignments, because they were so vividly written.

"I didn't know if I would live another day," he recalls, "but-I hate to tell you this-I enjoyed it. It was all so new to me, and I had such freedom!" With access to top leaders and privileged information, he often knew more about the big picture than many generals did, and the experience could not have been better training for a young writer. "It changed my whole life," he says. "I had only written fiction before, but all of a sudden I was working in reality." That reality included horrific scenes of loss and suffering-he was, for example, one of the first to see a German death camp-and he now believes that civilians and leaders rarely understand what young soldiers will face. He also came to realize, he says, that for some commanders, "soldiers are like pegs" to be easily moved about or even casually sacrificed to speed up an action.

We expected Alpert to send us an essay about his experiences, or perhaps about military history and its lessons. Instead, he gave us a story that he wrote for The New Yorker in 1950. For a few years after the war, he says, he and his friends rarely talked about their experiences; then, one night, a group of them started sharing stories. After he told his story, which he considered interesting but not especially shocking, another writer gasped, "That's the most awful thing I've ever heard!" Surprised, he went home and pondered her remark; and suddenly, he said, "five years later, I began to see the other side" not only of his story, but of war itself. He sat down and began to write; and when the resulting story was published, The New Yorker was deluged with letters. One woman wrote, "Your story kept me up all night. I must know if it is true or not. If it isn't true, why did you write it?"

Half a century later, when I read the story-which has been included in an anthology of the world's great literature-I was as shocked and troubled as she was; and like her, I begged Hollis to tell me if it is truth or fiction. "There is nothing in there that did not actually occur," he said-which leaves the story, which we have reprinted on page 35, to speak for itself. And speak it does, with haunting eloquence, about the same moral issues we're confronting today-the horror of unchecked evil, the double-edged sword of violence, and the terrible transformation war wreaks on heroes, villains and innocents alike.