## Coming Home: 1945
The 3rd Infantry Division returned to the United States in the summer of 1945. Murphy was discharged on September 21, 1945, as a first lieutenant, with a 50 percent disability rating.
The Army had rejected him as too small and too young in 1941-1942. He was coming home at 20 (or 21 by enlistment papers), with the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, three Purple Hearts, and the most extraordinary individual combat record of any American soldier whose awards were formally compared at that point.
His picture appeared on the cover of *Life* magazine on July 16, 1945 — one of the most widely circulated American magazines of the period. The cover photograph of a young soldier in uniform, decorated beyond what most Americans could process at a glance, introduced him to the country at large.
James Cagney, the actor, saw the cover and reached out. Cagney invited Murphy to Hollywood.
Murphy went to Hollywood. He had no acting experience, no particular desire for a film career that the records document, and no immediate success when he arrived. He worked small roles, struggled to find regular employment, and spent at least some period sleeping in a gymnasium because he did not have money for other accommodations.
He wrote his memoir first. *To Hell and Back*, co-written with David McClure, was published in 1949. It was a national bestseller — a first-person account of his wartime service, written in the style of its period, that gave American readers access to the experience of what the most decorated soldier of the war had actually been through. The book is the primary first-person account of Murphy’s wartime service, and it should be read as a memoir — a retrospective narrative shaped by memory and by the act of writing — rather than as a contemporaneous record.