To Hell and Back Read online

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Foreword

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  TO

  PRIVATE JOE SIEJA

  KILLED IN ACTION ON THE ANZIO BEACHHEAD

  January, 1944

  AND

  PRIVATE LATTIE TIPTON

  KILLED IN ACTION NEAR RAMATUELLE, FRANCE

  August, 1944

  If there be any glory in war,

  let it rest on men like these

  Foreword

  Audie Murphy was such a quintessential American hero it was as if someone had invented him. The Texas poor boy with the baby face and the sharpshooter aim personified all of the great symbols of this country: he was a gunfighter from the American West defending freedom and justice against great odds. He was personally modest and handsome as a movie star.

  As you will learn in To Hell and Back, the story of his World War II combat experiences, that title is not hyperbole. In all of the research I’ve done on World War II combat veterans I cannot recall another story that involves so much up close and personal fighting. He was a brilliant and courageous warrior with deep feelings about his fellow fighting men, their safety, and their common mission.

  For three years he was almost constantly on the front lines in North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe. For much of that time he was out front, leading scouting patrols into hostile territory or putting himself in harm’s way when fierce fighting was expected. I am still astonished that he survived so much firepower directed at him day after day, month after month.

  In this era of high tech combat, with laser guided missiles and remote controlled battlefields, Murphy’s exploits are all the more inspirational. It was his personal courage, cunning, and instincts that converted him into the most lethal one-man weapon the Army had on the ground against the Fascist forces.

  But this is more than a book about fighting. It is most of all a story of the kinship formed in military units fighting for a great cause and personal survival. Murphy’s buddies came alive for me as he described their bravery and idiosyncrasies, their wounds, and their heart-breaking deaths. You will come to know that other enduring American trait: the tough guy with the tender heart.

  I was first aware of Murphy as a war hero; he was on the cover of Life magazine when I was a youngster. Later he was a regular part of my Saturday afternoons as he starred in the matinees at the small-town movie theaters where I lived.

  I was always drawn to his laconic, confident style as an actor and I now realize those were the same qualities that made him such a popular leader of men during the war.

  Not long before his untimely death in an airplane accident I was working in California when Audie Murphy came back into the news. A woman friend of his had sent her dog to a trainer and she wasn’t happy with the results. As I recall, she asked Audie to intervene. He visited the dog trainer who then complained to the police that Murphy had shot at him.

  The local police brought Murphy in for questioning. By then his acting career was in decline and unfortunately his World War II heroism was pushed into the background by concerns over the widening war in Vietnam.

  Nonetheless when Murphy was released without charges a large number of reporters were outside the police station. Murphy agreed to take a few questions. One of the reporters asked, “Audie, did you shoot at that guy?”

  Audie Murphy, the most decorated combat veteran of World War II, stared at his interrogator for a moment and then said in that familiar Texas voice, “If I had, do you think I would have missed?”

  I loved that moment and all that Audie Murphy stood for as a citizen, a soldier, and a hero.

  –Tom Brokaw

  1

  ON a hill just inland from the invasion beaches of Sicily, a soldier sits on a rock. His helmet is off; and the hot sunshine glints through his coppery hair. With the sleeve of his shirt he wipes the sweat from his face; then with chin in palm he leans forward in thought.

  The company is taking a break. We sprawl upon the slope, loosen the straps of our gear, and gaze at the blue sky. It is my first day of combat; and so far the action of the unit has been undramatic and disappointingly slow.

  Just trust the army to get things fouled up. If the landing schedule had not gone snafu, we would have come ashore with the assault waves. That was what I wanted. I had primed myself for the big moment. Then the timing got snarled in the predawn confusion; and we came in late, chugging ashore like a bunch of clucks in a ferryboat.

  The assault troops had already taken the beach. The battle had moved inland. So for several hours we have tramped over fields and hills without direct contact with the enemy.

  It is true that the landing was not exactly an excursion. There was some big stuff smashing about; and from various points came the rattle of small arms. But we soon got used to that.

  Used to it!

  A shell crashes on a nearby hill; the earth quivers; and the black smoke boils. A man, imitating Jack Benny’s Rochester, shouts, “Hey, boss. A cahgo of crap just landed on Pigtail Ridge.” A ripple of laughter follows the announcement. “Hey, boss. Change that name to No-Tail Ridge. The tail go with the cahgo.”

  The second shell is different. Something terrible and immediate about its whistle makes my scalp start prickling. I grab my helmet and flip over on my stomach. The explosion is thunderous. Steel fragments whine, and the ground seems to jump up and hit me in the face.

  Silence again. I raise my head. The sour fumes of powder have caused an epidemic of coughing.

  “Hey, boss. The cahgo–”

  The voice snaps. We all see it. The redheaded soldier has tumbled from the rock. Blood trickles from his mouth and nose.

  Beltsky, a veteran of the fighting in North Africa, is the first to reach him. One glance from his professional eye is sufficient.

  Turning to a man, he says, “Get his ammo. He won’t be needing it. You will.”

  “Who me? I got plenty of ammo.”

  “Get the ammo. Don’t argue.”

  Snuffy Jones does not like the idea at all. A frown crawls over his sallow face; and beneath a receding chin, his Adam’s apple bobs nervously. With shaky fingers he removes the ammunition from the cartridge belt. One would think he was trying to neutralize a booby trap.

  “Who is he?” asks Brandon.

  “He was a guy named Griffin,” Kerrigan answers. “I got likkered up with him once in Africa. Told me he was married and had a couple kids.”

  “That’s rough.” Brandon’s eyes are suddenly deep and thoughtful.

  “He could have stayed out, I guess. But he volunteered. Had to get into the big show.”

  Novak, the Pole, has been listening with mouth agape. Now his lips curl savagely. “The sonsabeeches!” he growls to nobody in particular.

  Unfolding a gas cape, Beltsky covers the body with it.

  “That’ll do him a lot of good now,” says Brandon.

  “It’s to keep the flies
from blowing him,” explains Horse-Face Johnson soberly. “Flies go to work on ‘em right away. Fellow from the last war told me they swell up like balloons. Used ’em for pillows out in No-Man’s Land. Soft enough but they wouldn’t keep quiet. They was always losing wind in the dead of the night. Such sighing and whistling you never heard.”

  “For chrisake, shut up,” says Kerrigan.

  Johnson’s blue eyes twinkle sardonically. His long, lean face stretches into a grin. And his laugh is like the soft whinny of of a horse.

  “Don’t let it get you down, son. Used to be skittish myself till I worked as an undertaker’s assistant out in Minnesota. Took my baths in embalming fluid. Slept in coffins during the slack hours. Grave error. Damned nigh got buried one day when I got mistook for the late departed.”

  “Shut up!”

  “It’s the dying truth, son.”

  “Then why didn’t you get hooked up with a body-snatching outfit? You look like a natural for the buzzard detail.”

  “Why, you know, son, the army wouldn’t be guilty of giving a man a job he knowed anything about. Got tired of the racket anyhow. Couldn’t argue with the late departeds. Whatever I said they was always dead right.”

  “Oh, for chrisake,” mutters Kerrigan pleadingly.

  “Whee-he-he-he.”

  “Okay, men,” says Beltsky. “You’ve seen how it happens. Maybe you know now this game is played for keeps. Everybody on your feet. All right there, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Me?” drawls Snuffy. “I’m gittin’ up. Just give me time. Snapped-to once so fast that I mislocated my backbone.”

  “Would you like to be carried on a stretcher?”

  “Stretch who?”

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s move across Sicily.”

  “He was just sitting there on the rock,” says Steiner, his face filled with awe. “I was looking at him just a minute before.”

  “So what?” snaps Antonio irritably. “He shouldn‘ta been makin’ like a pigeon. He oughta kept his head down.” He taps himself on the chest. “You didn’t see me givin’ out wit the coos, did you?”

  “How could he know it was coming?”

  “Aw nuts! You could hear it comin’ a mile.”

  As we plod over the hills in sweat-soaked clothes, the uneasiness passes from my stomach to my mind. So it happens as easily as that. You sit on a quiet slope with chin in hand. In the distance a gun slams; and the next minute you are dead.

  Maybe my notions about war were all cockeyed. How do you pit skill against skill if you cannot even see the enemy? Where is the glamour in blistered feet and a growling stomach? And where is the expected adventure? Well, whatever comes, it was my own idea. I had asked for it. I had always wanted to be a soldier.

  The years roll back; and in my mind, I see a pair of hands. Calloused and streaked with dirt, they looked like claws; and they shook as they cupped around the match flame. He puffed on the cigarette. And as I waited, all ears, he bent over in a fit of coughing.

  “It’s that gas,” he explained. “Nearly eighteen years, and it’s still hangin’ on.”

  “But you knowed where they were,” I said.

  From the shade of the tree, he gazed over the cotton fields.

  “Of course, I knowed where they was,” he said. “Any ijiot would have. It was still early mornin’; and when they crawled through the field, they shook the dew off the wheat. So every blessed one of ’em left a dark streak behind. That give their positions away.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What would you done? I lined up my sights on the machine gun and waited.”

  “A machine gun?”

  “Yeah. It’s the devil’s own weepon. When they got to the edge of the patch, I could see ‘em plain. There was nothin’ to it. I just pulled the trigger and let ’em have it.”

  Fascinated, I glanced at the hands again, picking out the trigger finger. “You killed ’em?”

  “I didn’t do ’em any good.”

  “Did they shoot at you?”

  “Now what do you think? This was war. But I kept my head down and got along all right until that night they thowed over the gas. We didn’t get the alarm until I’d already breathed a lungful.”

  “What was they like?”

  “The Germans? I never took time to ast ‘em. They was shootin’ at us; so we shot at them.”

  “But you whipped ’em.”

  “We whopped ’em all right, but it wasn’t easy. They was hard fighters. Don’t ever kid yourself about that.”

  “Some day I aim to be a soldier.”

  “A sojer?” he said disgustedly. “What fer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you want to fight, start fightin’ these weeds.” He coughed again, spat out a gob of phlegm, and muttered, “A sojer.” He was still shaking his head when he gripped the plow handles and said, “Giddap,” to the mules.

  A soldier.

  Steiner is a soldier, but you would never see his kind on the recruiting posters. Short and pudgy, he has the round, innocent face of a baby and a voice as gentle as a child’s. He cannot get the knack of the army, though he tries hard. His gear is forever fouled up. It drips from his body like junk. Now he stumbles and falls. It is the third time he has tripped today; and Olsen, a huge, blond sergeant, is fresh out of patience.

  “What’s a-matter? What’s a-matter?” he snarls. “Pick up your dogs.”

  “It’s the legging strings. They keep coming unlaced.”

  “For chrisake, paste ‘em on if you ain’t got enough sense to lace ’em. Aw right, come on. Snap to it.”

  “Gotohell.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whyn’t you let him alone?” says Antonio. “De kid can’t help it.”

  “Keep your big nose outa this.”

  “Okay. Break it up,” says Beltsky. “You’ll soon have a belly full of fighting.”

  No, it was not the least bit like the dream I had as a child. That afternoon in Texas I had followed the veteran of World War I into the field. The sun beat down and the rows of cotton seemed endless. But I soon forgot both the heat and the labor.

  The weeds became the enemy, and my hoe, a mysterious weapon. I was on a faraway battlefield, where bugles blew, banners streamed, and men charged gallantly across flaming hills; where the temperature always stood at eighty and our side was always victorious; where the dying were but impersonal shadows and the wounded never cried; where enemy bullets always miraculously missed me, and my trusty rifle forever hit home.

  I was only twelve years old; and the dream was my one escape from a grimly realistic world.

  We were share-crop farmers. And to say that the family was poor would be an understatement. Poverty dogged our every step. Year after year the babies had come until there were nine of us children living, and two dead. Getting food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs was an ever-present problem. As soon as we grew old enough to handle a plow, an ax, or a hoe, we were thrown into the struggle for existence.

  My mother, a sad-eyed, silent woman, toiled eternally. As a baby, I sat strapped like a papoose in a yard swing while she fought the weeds in a nearby field.

  Our situation is not to be blamed on the social structure. If my father had exercised more foresight, undoubtedly his family would have fared much better. He was not lazy, but he had a genius for not considering the future.

  One day he gave up. He simply walked out of our lives, and we never heard from him again.

  My mother, attempting to keep her brood together, worked harder than ever. But illness overtook her. Gradually she grew weaker and sadder. And when I was sixteen she died.

  Except for a married sister, who was unable to support us, there was no family nucleus left. The three youngest children were placed in an orphanage. The rest of us scattered, going our individual ways. Boarding out, I worked for a while in a filling station; then I became a flunky in a radio repair shop.

  God knows where my pride came
from, but I had it. And it was constantly getting me into trouble. My temper was explosive. And my moods, typically Irish, swung from the heights to the depths. At school, I had fought a great deal. Perhaps I was trying to level with my fists what I assumed fate had put above me.

  I was never so happy as when alone. In solitude, my dreams made sense. Nobody was there to dispute or destroy them.

  After the death of my mother, I was more than ever determined to enter military service. When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, I was half-wild with frustration. Here was a war itself; and I was too young to enlist. I was sure that it would all be over in a few months and I would be robbed of the great adventure that had haunted my imagination.

  On my eighteenth birthday, I hurried to a marine corps recruiting station. This branch seemed the toughest of the lot; and I was looking for trouble. Unfortunately, the corps was looking for men, men italicized. A sergeant glanced over my skinny physique. My weight did not measure up to Leatherneck standards.

  Leaving the office in a blaze of unreasonable anger, I tried the paratroops. This was a new branch of service, lacking the legendary color of the marines, but it sounded rough. There was another point in its favor: paratroopers wore such handsome boots.

  That office was more sympathetic. The recruiting sergeant did not turn me down cold. He suggested that I load up on bananas and milk before weighing in. My pride was taking an awful beating. The sergeant was the first on a long list of uniformed authorities that I requested to go to the devil.

  The infantry finally accepted me. I was not overjoyed. The infantry was too commonplace for my ambition. The months would teach me the spirit of this unglamorous, greathearted fighting machine. But at that time I had other plans. After my basic training, I would get a transfer. I would become a glider pilot.

  Thus, with a pocket full of holes, a head full of dreams, and an ignorance beyond my years, I boarded a bus for the induction center. Previously I had never been over a hundred miles from home.