Against All Odds

Four men served in the same American infantry unit during the Second World War, and each of them ended up with the Medal of Honor. This book follows them through the campaign that carried the Allies from the landings in French Morocco to the Bavarian mountaintop retreat Hitler had made his own, a stretch of more than six hundred days in which the fighting grew steadily more brutal.

The four are very different people. Maurice "Footsie" Britt had played professional football before the war and went on to become the first American to collect every valor award available for a single war. Michael Daly left West Point without finishing, then repeatedly put himself in danger to keep his men alive. Keith Ware rose to general despite having been drafted, the only draftee ever to do so, and he later served in Vietnam. In Europe, Ware's life was saved by the best soldier he ever led, a youthful-looking Texan named Audie Murphy.

Alex Kershaw draws on interviews with those who knew them and a large body of primary sources to reconstruct their battles, from the deserts of North Africa to the heart of Nazi Germany. He then turns to what came after the shooting stopped. The medal brought honor, but it also brought weight and expectations that were hard to live with. The book asks which of these men, having come through the war against such long odds, would eventually find peace.