A Midnight Clear

A Midnight Clear is the third novel by the American novelist William Wharton. Based on Wharton's own experiences, it was published in 1982 following Birdy (1978) and Dad (1981). The novels deals with six American soldiers who get a mission to have an eye on a German outpost at the heart of the Ardennes Forest, but the mission turns out to be much more difficult than expected. Wharton notes that he wrote this novel "thinking of the massacre of My Lai in Vietnam, to show how easy it was for a massacre to take place. And he did know how easy".