To Hell And Back [1955]

This is a blood and guts no holds barred account by a man who is modest to the end when telling of his bravery and loyalty to his comrades. I'm not surprised that he won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and many other bravery decorations.

What I particularly love about this book is that it is about all fighting men and does not criticise any other nation or in the same vain hype up the actions of one particular Army.

I recommend this enthralling and modest account to anyone with an interest in truth. You won't regret or forget it.


raw and lean   July 31, 2003
billy briggs (waterford city, waterford Ireland)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is a potential 1000 page book stripped of all the frills that make modern bestsellers so boring,and,condensed into a raw and gritty 275 pages. The narrative takes the reader from North Africa,through Sicily,Italy and on into France. THe book is stripped of all emotion, and little of the man is discovered in it. Friends and enemies all die with the same matter-of-fact inevitability. The blood, the gore, the maimings and deaths especially at Anzio left me reading it with little or no feeling for what must have been an horrendous ordeal. An odd book but I still ate it up.


Yesterday's Hero - Today's Legend?   May 31, 2003
Pauline Neil (UK)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book does not glorify war. This book does not glorify the exploits of America's most decorated soldier. (He won 21 medals including The Congressional Medal of Honour, French Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with Palm)
This book tells the truth about the things that 'Company B, 15th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division' went through during 2 years of HELL!
Murph tells the reader about his friends and colleagues, the people he fought beside. How they lost life and limb (some just hours away from being sent home. Like Lattie Tipton)
He tells of their and his fears but, he never once mentions his medals, in fact he skims over the action where he won them. He was content to tell the story of his unit and their bravery. Of friends he found and lost. Of the cold and the wet and the mud. The foot rot, the blood and the sweat and the tears.
I went 'To Hell and Back' reading this book, but it was worth it.
Every school library should have a copy of this book in their history section.
Read it. Live it. Laugh, cry, be absorbed by it.
Go To Hell and Back with LT.Audie L Murphy. Company B. 15th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division...


Audie Murphy at his best   July 7, 2000
mossflower46@aol.com (Birchington, Kent)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Audie Murphy showed just how the war was.How friends were made and then lost, how the the green men were turned into fighting soldiers. I was there , every step of the way,he told it the way it was.I found it hard to put down. It made me re-think my views on war.


Excellent and worth reading   June 16, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

At first I was skeptical about the book. It is obviously ghostwritten. However, the ghostwriter is talented, his style a synthesis of Hemingway and Mickey Spillane. And Audie Murphy has a great and heroic tale to tell. Murphy's war is a lot different than say Eisenhower's and Patton's. Murphy became a master at small unit infantry tactics. He was one of the men. Ike and Patton were masters of strategy and were not really part of the men. What Murphy's story also illuminates is it is often just pure chance whether a soldier survives a war. Two pals of his were wounded in the right spots. Another had his heart pierced by a small shell fragment. Another buddy trusted a group of Germans faking a surrender and received a chest full of German lead for his trouble. For all those who liked the fictional "Battle Cry", you will like this book.