Acclaimed historian Stephen Ambrose begins his examination with a glance inward -- he starts this book with his brothers his first and forever friends and the shared experiences that join them for a lifetime overcoming distance and misunderstandings. <br> He next tells of Dwight D. Eisenhower who had a golden gift for friendship and who shared a perfect trust with his younger brother Milton in spite of their apparently unequal stations. With great emotion Ambrose describes the relationships of the young soldiers of Easy Company who fought and died together from Normandy to Germany and he recalls with admiration three unlikely friends who fought in different armies in that war. He recounts the friendships of Lewis and Clark and of Crazy Horse and He Dog. Ambrose remembers and celebrates the friends he has made and kept throughout his life. <br> <I>Comrades</I> concludes with the author's recollection of his own friendship with his father. <I>He was my first and always most important friend</I> Ambrose writes. <I>I didn't learn that until the end when he taught me the most important thing that the love of father-son-father-son is a continuum just as love and friendship are expansive.</I>