Milton Wolff (October 7, 1915 – January 14, 2008) was an American writer and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, the last commander of the Lincoln Battalion of XV International Brigade, and a prominent communist.

[3] He "detested elegant uniforms", customarily wearing "baggy trousers, a stained leather jacket" and, in wet weather, a "woolly poncho".

[3] After a year's fighting in Brunete, Belchite and Teruel, the Brigade lost two senior officers, David Doran and Robert Hale Merriman at the Gandesa battle on the Aragon front.

[6] Wolff appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend VALB (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) from being banned as a Communist front organization.

"[7] According to historian Peter Carroll: When Congress passed the McCarran Act in 1950, obliging all designated subversive organizations to register with the federal government and creating heavy penalties for leaders who refused to cooperate, the entire executive committee of the VALB resigned in 1950.

He even offered the services of the aging veterans of the Lincoln Brigade to the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, who declined them.

This extraordinary novel centers on one battalion, the Americans, known as the Lincolns, barely trained men who went into battle armed with 1903 Remington rifles.