To Hell and Back: The Classic Memoir of World War II by America's Most Decorated Soldier

"From the day that Churchill came into power in May of 1940, he really only had one objective. A lot of Brits don’t like to hear this, but he knew that there was no chance for Britain, or the Empire, unless they “dragged” the United States into the war, as he put it. Almost daily until Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Churchill was doing everything he possibly could to get the United States into the war. He was relieved when Pearl Harbor happened because then, finally, the Americans were a part of the worldwide effort. But I should stress that Germany declared war on the United States, not the other way around. It was Hitler who decided—because of the Tripartite agreement between the Italians, the Japanese and the Germans—to declare war on the United States. So you might want to ask yourself, what would have happened if Hitler hadn’t done that? Would the US—seriously under-armed and taken by surprise—have engaged in the Pacific against the Japanese and then gone to war in Europe? You could make a good argument for saying they might not have. Their war was with the Japanese, not Nazi Germany. Thankfully, Hitler made that massive geopolitical error and the industrial might of the United States helped us massively. The 3rd Infantry Division (ID) that he belonged to began in North Africa in November 1942, but Audie Murphy didn’t see any combat until the 10th of July, 1943, in Sicily. He was in B company of the 15th Infantry Regiment. Among the American divisions, the 3rd ID fought the longest in the European theater. They went all the way from North Africa to Berchtesgaden in Germany, which is an awful long way. They had the most Medal of Honor recipients of any American division in Europe, Audie Murphy being one of them. He was the most decorated US infantryman of World War Two, gaining every medal that you could possibly get for valour. He was a really skinny, small guy who had been rejected by the Marines and the Navy. He was allowed into the US Army on his second attempt, I believe. He was the last guy you’d think would end up being this incredible warrior, unrivaled in terms of medals, in World War Two. He wrote this book, To Hell and Back, which was also turned into a movie. It’s very intense, a great distraction. I think most of it is true. There is a little bit of dramatization here and there, and a bit of dialogue that I’m not sure would really have happened. But when I was writing about Audie Murphy, I read the book several times and I looked at the archival material as well. Surprisingly, a lot of it was spot on. I was quite taken by the fact that what he wrote corresponded to what had actually happened because it’s quite difficult to do. He was a lowly private at the beginning of the war and you really have no idea what’s going on in terms of the big picture. Your recollections are very fragmentary. Also, because of trauma, the violence, the loss and the chaos, it’s hard to create a narrative that actually intersects with what happened. It’s only afterwards that you can put it in context. So he did a good job. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s a really fun read, very enjoyable. His story is also remarkable. When they made the movie, he actually played himself. It was a really big hit at the time, I think the highest-grossing movie for Paramount up until that point. It made him wealthy. Much of that wealth he gambled away later on in his life. It still is a good movie. A lot of people might sit there and go, ‘It’s so corny!’ but I actually think it’s really fun and watchable. You’d be very hard-pressed to find someone who saw as much combat in the critical battles in the liberation of Western Europe, and experienced as much of the grit and the grime and the horror of war, as Audie Murphy. He had an extraordinary ability to lead. He’s about as close as you can come to an effective predator, in a uniform, in the US Army, in World War Two. He was extraordinarily good at killing people and very good at not getting killed. And whether people want to embrace this fully or not, you needed people like that to get the job done. In many battles, when it really came down to it, you needed people to get out of foxholes and attack and destroy the enemy. In terms of Western Europe, whether it was the Brits, the Canadians, or the Yanks, it didn’t matter: We were aiming for Berlin and Berlin is a long way away from Casablanca. It’s a long way from Normandy, even. You had to get up most days and attack. The Germans, often, were defending. It takes a certain kind of person to do that over and over and over again. And to do it willingly. The vast majority of people in that situation are terrified. They’re scared and they’re not going to put their life on the line. They’ll do what they’re told, they’ll do things automatically if they’re trained, but to be enterprising, to actually consciously put your life on the line over and over and over again and to do something that goes beyond the call of duty is rare. And I think Audie Murphy was probably the rarest of the rare. He went all the way across Sicily. Then there was the Salerno invasion in September 1943. He fought with the 3rd ID all the way up the spine of central Italy. He was at Anzio, in January 1944. He was wounded there, then came back in at the end of the battle and was part of the breakout. His fourth amphibious invasion was Operation Dragoon, in August of 1944. This summer, I was actually at the vineyard where he earned his DSC or Distinguished Service Cross. You can see the beach at St Tropez where they came ashore. Then he fought all the way up the Rhone Valley, through the Vosges mountains, was in the Battle of the Colmar Pocket in January and February of 1945. That’s close to the German border and where he earned the Medal of Honor. Finally, he was taken off the frontline in March of 1945 because you didn’t want your Medal of Honor recipients to be killed in action: they were too useful as propaganda figures. Although I would argue that with someone like Murphy, you should have just kept him in the line because he was so effective. Other people can raise war bonds. So he’d gone all the way from Sicily to Salzburg—where he received the Medal of Honor in June of 1945, after the war had ended—and was still only 20 years old. He had killed a lot—some people say he killed over 250 Germans, which is a ridiculous statement. He was totally brutalized and had massive PTSD. His face appeared on the front cover of Life magazine in July of 1945. He was handsome and the literal cover boy for American heroism in World War Two. Jimmy Cagney, the actor who played gangsters in Hollywood, saw him on the cover of Life and said, ‘Wow, who’s this kid? He could be a movie star! He’s the real deal, the action hero.’ Cagney contacted Audie Murphy and flew him out to Hollywood in the fall of 1945. He let him sleep in his pool house, paid for acting lessons, put him into a gym, fattened him up. And then, lo and behold, Audie Murphy ended up being a big star and appearing in more than 30 movies. To Hell and Back was a blockbuster movie in 1955. As I said, Audie Murphy played himself, including the scene where his best friend was killed and other key moments. He was still hugely traumatized with a serious case of PTSD as he reenacted those scenes. He actually asked the producers to cut the scene where he received the Medal of Honor but they thought it was the climax and too important not to have in the movie. So they finally persuaded him to keep it in, but it tells you a little bit about his mindset. Yes, and I follow them not just to the end of the war, but afterwards. The last quarter of the book is post-World War Two. Audie Murphy had a very interesting second chapter of his life, being a movie star. He wrote a lot of country and western songs and starred in a lot of westerns. But he was deeply scarred by the war. He slept with a pistol under his pillow and had troubled relationships. The remarkable thing is that, given how much he’d seen and how much he endured, he was even able to function at all, that he didn’t just go and drink himself to death or commit suicide. One thing that a lot of the characters in these books I’m talking about have in common is incredible resilience. He certainly had it."