Murphy’s Trek To Hell & Back FOR US Lives

In writing “To Hell & Back” after WWII, Audie Murphy showed how some Americans have given the FIRST as well as Lincoln’s “last full measure of devotion” to their countrymen. It also colors if not contrasts that Russian soldier’s surrender to a drone in Ukraine…

Born on a sharecropper farm in Texas, with only 5 years of schooling, orphaned at 16, Murphy would volunteer for military service a year later & days after Pearl Harbor to become the “most decorated soldier in WWII.” Murphy would go on to star in 44 movies & lay the groundwork for PTS research helping Korean & Viet Nam vets. He would know. As a Fox story relates & as an upcoming “Targeted” nonfiction series will reflect upon, soldier Murphy was “wounded three times, fighting in nine major campaigns in the Mediterranean & European Theaters. After dying in a plane crash at age 45 in 1971, Murphy is buried in Section 46 of Arlington National. I’m going to visit him there because I (like so many other Americans of that generation) are still enraptured by the 1955 movie with the same title as his best-selling book. Especially picture Murphy’s actions at the Battle of Colmar Pocket in Holtzwihr, France as memorialized for us in his medal citation:

“With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, & employed its 50 caliber machine gun … alone & exposed to German fire from three sides, his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans … the enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back … for an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate [Murphy] but he continued to hold his position” & instead eliminated an entire squad that was trying to out flank him … “He received a leg wound, but … continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted.” After receiving his Medal of Honor, Murphy would simply say, “They were killing my friends.” Don’t make ‘em like this anymore, anywhere.

Davd Soul