Audie Murphy brings us his own first-hand experience of death in war in the opening pages of his classic WWII memoir, and depicts the harrowing events of the war with a direct and immediate style, leaving out the predictable saws of melodrama, glory, his medals won. Instead relates with intensity and strength the fear, courage and death that followed the men he knew in battle.

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. 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 Sicily, Anzio, Rome, through France, and finally into Germany itself. By V-E 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.