Boys quickly become old men in the brutality of the Italian campaign. From the bloody beaches of Salerno to the wars closing chapter in May 1945, every foot of Italian ground is gained only after a grueling death match against the combat tested Wehrmacht, vaunted Fallschirmjaegers, and the fanatically twisted Waffen S.S. led by intractable foes such as Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Abarth whose God is Hitler, and whose only desire other than totally possessing the icy distant Comtessa Gina DeContella is the total destruction of his enemies. For private Dominic Abbruzzi, son of proud Italian immigrants, and his fellow G.I.'s it seems at times a hopeless task that none of them will survive. Their only respite from the seemingly endless madness are their thoughts and dreams of the nubile young women they loved and left behind. For naïve Dominic it was Carole, sweet and willing, but wise beyond her nineteen years. Their love was forever till his betrayal with her best friend. Could she, would she, ever forgive? Private Charles B. Blakely VI, heroic, descended from high born southern cavalier stock. Abbruzzi and the others look to him him for his strength of character and innate wisdom, but Blakely has abandoned all that was his birthright and fights to keep his own secret demons at bay. Private Richard Yamovitz knows all about misery and disaster, they have dogged his very footsteps, repeatedly destroying his hope of rising up in his life or of ever finding the one girl he can call his own. He had in fact found her in the warmth of an Irish flower, but her thug of a brothers unremitting hatred smashed his frail dream. Now his only sanctuary in in the fellowship of his three friends. Private Francis X. Giordano, wise cracking, two fisted Italian-Irish New Yorker. He is ready and willing to take on the world with his brilliant mind. He is anti-army and anything else that keeps him from his women and having a good time with his life. He just can not keep his mind from grappling with the insanity of the war he is stuck in. Can these young men facing evil and danger so far from all they hold sacred and dear endure and survive the miasmic hell engulfing them as they seek the elusive only way home; The Back Door To Glory?