The War of the Lieutenants
Claudio Montoya was a young engineering lieutenant in the Army during the hardest years of the war. Engineer or not, he was repeatedly called upon to act as an infantryman, on incredible marches and missions ranging from reckless to comical, heroic, and often tragic. Years later, retired and living abroad, he wrote a first-person novel about his days in the field. The book is called "El pecado de Deng Xiaoping" and reading it teaches more than most analyses. What it sometimes lacks in narrative craft is more than compensated for by the authenticity of the account.