They Called it Purple Heart Valley: A Combat Chronicle of the War in Italy

Here is a report-in pictures and in words-of exactly what happened to U.S. troops during the bitterest phases of the WWII Italian campaign. An excellent, richly illustrated, account of the bloodiest phase of the Italian campaign.

This report is not based upon a hurried visit behind the lines; Margaret Bourke-White spent a full five months on the Italian front photographing, questioning, observing, and living in close association with U.S. troops. She was not content to remain safely behind the combat area. She flew over the German lines and narrowly escaped being shot down. On the ground she came closer to the enemy lines than any woman has been before the most advanced American post around Cassino.

Miss Bourke-White took the title for her book from the GI's name for the "Cassino Corridor." This was the valley that always was under German observation and from which, if a man came back alive and in one piece without the Purple Heart the return was considered a gift from the gods.

From The New York Times Review by Foster Hailey

November, 1944

Margaret Bourke-White's photographic-written record of the weeks she spent slogging through the mud, riding a jeep up and down Highway 6, climbing mountain peaks in the dark with her heavy equipment to get just the right place and the right light to shoot her pictures, photographing the quick, the dead and the dying in gun emplacements, front-line foxhole, emergency dressing station and rear-base hospital, is one of the best and most remarkable books to come out of the war.

Although the most exciting photographs and the best reading are of battle, Miss Bourke-White gives the whole picture. She tells of the misery of the Italian civilians behind the lines; the black market through which some Italians fleeced other Italians; the bungling of the American Military Government.