To Hell and Back

I just finished reading To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy. I was aware of the book, but had never read it. The book, written without a ghostwriter, is a gritty narrative from the perspective of a private infantryman to a front line combat officer. In eloquent and insightful prose, at times almost poetic, he recounts the day to day struggle of men in trenches, slogging through muddy fields and over the frozen terrain of WWII Europe. The stench of death permeates the work, the stench of rotting corpses, burnt flesh, and black powder in the nostrils. But it is also a book about life, the hopes of the soldiers in the hopelessness of war.

He introduces us to a cast of fellow characters and through their eyes we see the intimate reality of the foot soldiers, the inedible canned rations, the exhaustion beyond human endurance, the bravery and collapse of the human spirit. Of men willing themselves to fight amidst the chaos of action and leaving their blood and broken bodies beneath the soil of foreign lands. Of having to hold their bowels as they are about to meet the enemy, and then losing them when they do. Audie Murphy returned home, the most decorated soldier of the United States Army, and took Hollywood by storm with his boyish good looks belying the battle hardened steel just below the skin. Yes, war is hell, and To Hell and Back makes that abundantly clear.