Robert Bowen was drafted into Company C, 401st Glider Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, as World War II broke out, and soon afterwards found himself storming ashore amid the chaos on Utah Beach, through unfamiliar terrain littered with minefields and hidden snipers. He was wounded during the Normandy campaign but went on to fight in Holland and the Ardennes where he was captured and his "trip through hell" truly began. Written shortly after the war, Bowen's narrative is immediate, direct and compelling. His account, one of the few by a member of a glider regiment, is a brutal insight into the battlefields of World War II and a vivid recreation of just what life was like in an elite unit. From the horror of D-Day and the despair of captivity, to the taste of C Rations and the fear of soldiers under fire, this memoir tells the full story of one man's total war. ILLUSTRATIONS 50 photographs