"Audie Murphy hit the big time with this simple, compelling narrative.It is a book of raw honesty, clipped descriptions and simple courage."AudioFile

"Tom Parker brings this terse yet vivid and articulate memoir to life.Parker's clear and well-paced reading is a joy."Library Journal

The time is 1943, the place is Sicily, and the event is the start of the most remarkable career of any American infantryman in the war. Audie Murphy was a desperately poor eighteen-year-old orphan when he joined the Army, nineteen when he first saw a buddy die from an enemy bullet and an enemy die from one of his own. During the next two years, he fought in Italy, France, and Germany. By VE-day, he had killed at least 240 Germans, had single-handedly destroyed a German tank in one battle and held off six tanks in another, and had become the most decorated soldier in American history, winning every medal his country offered, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. Four years later he was living in Hollywood trying to get an acting career off the ground when he and a friend decided to turn his story into a book. Instantly recognized for its grim authenticity and its unblinking accounts of some of the most terrible fighting in the war, To Hell and Back became a best-seller and, in 1955, the basis for one of the most successful WWII films ever madewith Murphy playing himself.