AUDIE MURPHY’S MEDAL OF HONOR FEAT

            Audie Murphy had a rough childhood.  He was born on June 20, 1925 in rural Texas.  He was the 7^th of 12 kids.  His father was a sharecropper who abandoned his family when Audie was a young boy.  He was called “Short Breeches” by other kids because he had to wear the same pair of pants even after he had outgrown them.  Audie dropped out of school in 5^th grade to make money to help his family.  He worked picking cotton for $1 / day and did an assortment of other jobs.  His mother was worked to death when he was 16.  After Pearl Harbor, he attempted to enlist in the military, trying several branches, but was turned down because the was underweight and underage.  In 1942, he got into the army at age 17 with a forged birth certificate and after eating a lot of bananas and drinking a lot of milk.  He was 19 years old and weighed 110 pounds.  He joined the 3^rd Infantry Division which was sent to North Africa.  His fellow G.I.s called him “Baby” because he looked so young.  The division moved on to Sicily (where he had his first bout of malaria) and then to Italy.  He fought at Anzio where he was awarded the Bronze Star by taking out a tank with rifle grenades.  When he shot two Italian officers fleeing on horses, his commander asked him why he did that.  Audie:  “That’s our job.”  He had been hardened by his experiences.  He would lead patrols and often went out on his own to stalk Germans, especially snipers.  It was on to southern France.  In 1944, his platoon was assaulting a hill defended by Germans.  His best friend was killed when he exposed himself after the enemy put up a white flag.  This enraged Audie who took a German MG-42 machine gun and took out several machine gun nests by himself.  He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (the second highest American medal).

                 In January, 1945, he had been promoted to 2^nd Lieutenant and was fighting to eliminate the Colmar Pocket.  By January 24, his company was down to 18 men out of 120.  (He once told his friend cartoonist Bill Maudlin that he felt that he was “a fugitive from the law of averages.”)  He and his seventeen men were ordered to defend against a German attack, but it was so cold they could not dig fox holes in the frozen ground.  They were reinforced by two tank destroyers and some smaller armored vehicles.  Two days later, a German force of six Tiger tanks and 250 infantry came at them from across a field.  One tank destroyer crashed in a ditch and the other was hit by German artillery.  Audie ordered his men to withdraw into the forest and he stayed with a telephone calling in artillery fire.  The Germans kept coming, so Audie jumped on the damaged tank destroyer to use its .50 caliber machine gun.  The problem was compounded by the fact that the vehicle was on fire and liable to blow up any minute.  He couldn’t stop the tanks, but he could deprive them of their infantry support.  He started mowing down the Germans.  At one point, a German squad tried to sneak up on him.  They got within ten yards before he noticed them and killed them all.  He continued firing and calling in artillery for about an hour before the Germans retreated.  By this time, he was wounded.  In spite of this, he insisted on leading his men in a counterattack.  The tank destroyer blew up.  He killed or wounded 50 Germans that day.  He was promoted to 1^st Lieutenant and awarded the Medal of Honor on June 2, 1945. 

            It is estimated that during the war, he killed, wounded, or captured 240 enemy soldiers.  He is the most decorated American soldier in WWII, including the Medal of Honor, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, and several Purple Hearts.  After the war, he became a movie star.  He appeared in mostly Westerns.  He played himself in the biopic “To Hell and Back”.  It was based on his autobiography. The movie was a huge hit, but he was upset that it was not realistic in portraying the horrors of war.  He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder which caused him to sleep with a pistol under his pillow.  He died in a plane crash at age 45.  

https://www.military.com/history/almost-80-years-later-audie-murphys-medal-of-honor-action-still-something-out-of-movie.html#:~:text=Murphy%20was%20promoted%20to%20first,his%20actions%20outside%20of%20Holtzwihr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/audie-murphy-most-highly-decorated/