For some historians, wars are made of battles and maps, generals and strategies. But only the soldier who was there, on the ground, can truly comprehend the realities of war, its stories of individual triumph, the formation of lifelong friendships, and above all, doing a job that had to be done against all adversity.

The 440th Signal Battalion chronicles the saga of one U.S. Army battalion over seven decades, a time during which the world, and its warfare, changed more than it had in the thousand years that came before.

Experience war as the 440th did, as they are attacked the night of December 10, 1944, by the Japanese, often unable to see their adversaries, but close enough to exchange taunts with an enemy soldier, through the heart wrenching story of the death of Specialist Aaron R. Clark in Iraq in December 2003, the battalion’s last wartime loss before its inactivation in 2007.

From World War II, through Korea, the Cold War, and the Gulf War, the story of the 440th comes to life through hundreds of interviews, documents, and photographs. Ultimately, it is a story of ordinary people acting extraordinarily.