David Rabe was born March 10,1940, m Dubuque, Iowa, the son of a high school teacher who later became a meatpacker, and a department store worker. He was educated at Catholic institutions for whom he also played football He earned his B.A. from Loras College in 1962. Rabe went to Villanova University in Philadelphia for a master's degree in theatre but was drafted before he completed the program of study. From 1965 to 1967 he served in the U.S. Army, with eleven months of duty in Vietnam. Rabe—like his character Pavlo Hummel— was assigned to hospital duty, and though he did not engage in combat, he witnessed fighting at close range. His experience in Vietnam—particularly his shock at the youth, and inexperience of the soldiers dying there—provided the substance for his early theatrical successes.

As he recalls in the introduction to...