A Lion at War: World War II Hero Maurice Britt's Journey from the NFL to the Medal of Honor

Maurice Britt’s life could have been a Hollywood movie. On a Sunday in November 1941, he caught the game-winning touchdown for the Detroit Lions. On another Sunday almost exactly a year later, he rushed the shores of North Africa, beginning more than a year of almost constant combat that would see him become one of the United States’ most decorated soldiers of World War II. A Lion at War follows this larger-than-life American soldier as he blazes a trail of valor from the football field to the battlefield.

Born in small-town Arkansas, Maurice Britt graduated as valedictorian of his high school and went on to captain the football team at the University of Arkansas, where he earned an All-American Honorable Mention. Drafted by the Detroit Lions, Britt played alongside future Supreme Court justice Byron “Whizzer” White and Steve Belichick, father of the future NFL coach. On November 16, 1941, the rookie caught the game-winning touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles. He would never play another down.

A month after his gridiron triumph, Britt entered active duty in the U.S. Army and began an altogether different—and deadlier—battle that took him first to North Africa and then to Sicily for a summer of fighting under General Patton. In September 1943, he and his company came ashore in Italy and delivered one of the army’s most impressive displays of small-unit combat leadership of all time. Within three days, he earned a Silver Star; within six weeks, a Bronze Star. Within eight weeks, he received the Medal of Honor—for singlehandedly defeating a German attack with rifle, machine gun, and grenades, while wounded. “Nazis Thrown for Loss,” declared newspapers back home.

In January 1944, Britt completed his fourth amphibious landing, at Anzio up the coast of Italy. Within a day, he won a Distinguished Service Cross for helping destroy twenty-five German machine-gun positions. After a month of crushing combat, a German tank round ripped through Britt’s command post. The explosion fractured his leg, peppered his back with more than forty holes, and severed his right arm at the elbow, which he managed to pick up before collapsing. Britt survived, but his war was over. He left the battlefield as the U.S.’s most decorated soldier until Audie Murphy surpassed his remarkable record.

Intimate as well as epic, A Lion at War restores Britt and his story of service, sacrifice, and heroism to their rightful place in the annals of American military history.