Devil At My Heels - Louis Zamperini (2003)

"The Bible speaks of the Word of God as a seed. Sometimes it's planted by the wayside, and nothing grows there. Sometimes it's sown among the thorns and represents the person who makes the decision an then goes back to his old life of bars and chasing women or whatever. A third seed is sown among the rocks. There's sand and dirt between the rocks, and when it rains you'll see a stalk of green coming up. But on the first day with sunshine it wilts because there is no room for roots.
The fourth seed is planted on fertile soil, and finally it takes hold and has a chance to grow and live. That's what happened to me." ~Louis Zamperini

Title: Devil At My Heels: A World War II Hero's Saga of Torment, Survival, and Forgiveness

Author: Louis Zamperini

Genre: Historical memoir

Published: 2003

Number of Pages: 292

Recommended for: 13+

Summary: (official) A juvenile delinquent, a world class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller than most, when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty-seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith-and the ever-present sharks. On the forty-seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land-and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war.

Louie hugging his mom for the first time in 2 years

Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird-a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive.
Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short-lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking.
A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," DEVIL AT MY HEELS is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.

Content Review

Sexual content: Louie recalls shooting a bull's scrotum with a BB gun.

A girl tries to French kiss Louie, and Louie's coach says not to have sex, because of "the emotional involvement that's supposed to come hand in hand with sex" and affects training.

After The Quack beats Louie's friend Bill Harris, Louie describes The Quack looking like he had intercourse with a woman. If you came back drunk in the army air corps, Louis explains how the MPs would "haul you to the infirmary and forcefully inject a 15% Argyrol solution straight up your penis." Because the air corps didn't want anyone catching VD. Louie says, "I heard more than one recruit protest, 'No, I didn't have any sex with any woman.' But who trusts a drunk?"

It is mentioned WWI soldiers put cigars up their anus to get out of their service.

Louie running.

The first interrogation question Louie receives is, "How many girls so you have on your islands to satisfy your military personnel?"
Louie replies (how their men get "satisfied") "They use their willpower and wait until they get home."
The questioner replied, "Japan provides girls on every island to keep our men happy."
Page 140: A guard masturbates and "had intercourse with a duck...all I'll say is the duck died" also on that page, a guard orders Louie to thrust himself into a twenty-something Japanese girl who worked cleaning pots and pans.
An actress has post-war Louie give her a massage, and "she took off most of her clothes".

Profanity: H**l, b*****d, and d**n are used less than 10 times each. S**t, A*s, B***h, and crap are used once or twice. The cruelest guard (before The Bird) was nicknamed S**thead.

Violence: While sleeping in a boxcar, Louie recalls how a sleeping man falls out of the car and is cut in two by the train wheels. The guards use a B-24 pilot's corpse for a mock bayonet drill. The Bird beats Louie's ear with a belt buckle. The Quack nearly beats Bill Harris to death. Violence is what you'd expect in any other war book and the movie will probably be rated R.

Drug content: Before becoming a Christian, Louie is a party animal. He turns to alcohol after the war as a way to wipe The Bird from his memory, only to have his problem become worse.

My opinion: After reading Unbroken, I had had had to read this. I liked both, however Unbroken focused more on Louie's life in captivity whereas this focuses equally on his running career, being a Japanese POW and post-war life. (I mean, Louie's story was interesting before WWII) 
Anyways, the book opens up with a portion of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoner of War Article 2. And the quote, "A smooth sea never made a good sailor." (by anonymous) which describes Louie's situation well. I am in LOVE with Louie's story and have never gotten bored with it. 

Louie Zamperini (left) and Pete Zamperini (right)

Not many juvenile delinquents make it to the Olympics. And even fewer juvenile delinquents who become Olympians meet Hitler or become bombardiers. And, even fewer still become Japanese POWs or set a record for surviving in an inflated raft.

The end is the best part of the book. For some who get offended at the simple mention of Jesus Christ, their least favorite part is the end. Well, I'll make it clear. Louis makes it clear he hates when Christians shove the Bible down other people's throats. He does go more in-depth than Unbroken, but it is NOT pushy or ANYTHING like that. He does, however, never surrender or back down in his faith, which I admire. His book also focuses on his pre-war life more than Unbroken.
I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.

P.S. Louie was featured on the show 48 Hours (Race to Freedom) and Shark Week (Adrift: 47 Days With Sharks) as well as the Today show and numerous CBS shows. A movie will be made in 2013, supposedly starring Nicholas Cage as Louie. I like Cage, but he is not my vision of Louie....

Which one should I read - Devil At My Heels or Unbroken?

Devil At My Heels had some things Unbroken didn't, and Unbroken has some things Devil At My Heels didn't. If you enjoy reading, read both! If you don't want to, read Unbroken and if you're a Christian, read the last 80 pages of Devil at My Heels.

If you are a Christian and don't have time to read or don't like to, read Devil At My Heels. If you read either, bring a box of tissues.