To Hell And Back (Remembering Audie Murphy, June 20, 1925 - May 28, 1971)

http://the-american-catholic.com ^ | June 20, 2014 | Donald R. McClarey

[NKP_Vet]

Today would be the 88th birthday of Audie Murphy if he had not died in a plane crash, fittingly enough on Memorial Day weekend, forty-three years ago.

In the Fifties actor Audie Murphy achieved stardom, mainly in Westerns. Murphy looked like a typical Hollywood “pretty boy” but he was anything but. From a family of 12 in Texas, he was the sixth child, Murphy had dropped out of school in the fifth grade to help support his dirt poor family after his worthless father ran off. His mother died in 1941. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army at 16, lying about his birthday, partially to help support his younger brothers and sister and partially because he dreamed of a military career. He served with the Third Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. By the end of the War, just before his 19th birthday, he was a First Lieutenant and had earned, in hellish combat, a Medal of Honor, a Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, a Legion of Merit, a French Legion of Honor, a French Croix de Guerre, a Belgian Croix de Guerre, two Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts. He was the most decorated soldier of the US Army in World War 2. Here is his Medal of Honor Citation which helps explain why Murphy entitled his war memoir To Hell and Back:

[UnwashedPeasant]

Form the end of his book, "To Hell and Back":

When I was a child, I was told that men were branded by war. Has the brand been put on me? Have the years of blood and ruin stripped me of all decency? Of all belief?

Not of all belief. I believe in the force of a hand grenade, the power of artillery, the accuracy of a Garand. I believe in hitting before you get hit, and that dead men do not look noble.

But I also believe in men like Brandon and Novak and Swope and Kerrigan; and all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting. The men who went and would go again to hell and back to preserve what our country thinks right and decent.

[Shark24]

Thank you for a great post.

[virgil283]

Thanks NKP good post....You never see a true hero bragging about what he did.

The best line in the movie was - Kerrigan: [after a jumpy Murphy shoots at his own image in a mirror] "Man, that's the first time I ever seen a Texan beat himself to the draw. "

[Tax-chick]

Someone posted recently that we shouldn’t talk about Post-Traumatic Stress “Disorder,” but simply about Post-Traumatic Stress, because effects of some kind are the norm, rather than the exception.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping and the links!

[jch10]

Thanks for this post. I enjoyed remembering Audie.