To Hell and Back (1955)

Based on the true exploits of Audie L. Murphy’s experiences during the Second World War, he plays himself as he leaves his rural Texas farmstead and makes his way via training, North Africa, Italy and France to a parade back home where he is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour. Now obviously he is making this film and pretty much intact, too, so there’s not a great deal of jeopardy about that. What we do witness, though, is an understated patriot who knows how to engage with an audience and who, given the Korean War was still keeping young American men from their families as this was released, manages to convey a less militaristic and more human characterisation of a soldier as opposed to the more “ye ha!” types. Perhaps it is a little sentimentalised, but he comes across as very much a charismatic man in or leading a squad of friends, or brothers, and with plenty of cheeky banter incorporated into the action scenes, the whole film has a cinematic authenticity to it that I found quite watchable. Though there’s nothing especially graphic here, it still doesn’t shy away from tragedy and goes some way to reminding us that war isn’t a game nor were the Nazis the pushover so often suggested in other war movies.