Hunt Co., TX - Military - Audie Murphy *********************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: "Sarah Swindell" Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm *********************************************** Audie Murphy TOO YOUNG TO FIGHT! The big Marine recruiting sergeant looked up at the thin face of the kid in front of the desk. "How old are you?" he asked. "Eighteen, sir!" "Yep," the sergeant said dryly. His experienced eyes studied the thin frame of the young Texas boy. "How tall?" he asked at last. "Five feet, seven, sergeant." The sergeant nodded, then looked the kid full in the eyes. "How much do you weight?" The kid hesitated. "One hundred and eight pounds, sir." The sergeant shook his head. "You can't make the U. S. Marines. Try the Army down the street. I hear they have a war on, too" He turned away to avoid the hurt look in the kid's eyes. The boy walked toward the door. "What did you say your name was?" called out the sergeant. The kid turned, "Murphy...Audie Murphy..." Then he was gone. The sergeant shrugged. He had to face many of these boys trying to worm their way into the Marines. The Marines wanted men. "Audie Murphy," he said with a grunt, then promptly dismissed the episode from his mind. It wasn't until three or four years later that he would remember that name with a start...Audie Murphy. The kid had a hard time. He was seventeen, not eighteen, in that blazing year of 1942, and he wanted to be a Marine, a flier, or a solider--anything so that he could get away from the cotton fields of his part of Texas. But the paratroopers turned him down, too, although an experienced recruiting sergeant tipped the boy off to filling up on bananas and milk. It was a good tip. He made fours pounds that way and was finally accept in the infantry. It didn't take him long to get a nickname in his training outfit at Camp Wolters, Texas. Service outfits have a neat way of tabbing a man with a nickname that sticks. For thirteen weeks of basic training the skinny, sharecropper's kid was called "Baby." In August of 1944, units of the Third Division, Seventh United State Army, landed at Yellow Beach in the invasion of southern France. Company B of the Fifteenth United State Infantry was pinned down by accurate enemy machine-gun fire soon after they had landed. The German machine guns were on a wooded hill with command of the vineyards and canebrakes where Baker Company had taken cover. The murderous fire ripped through the canes and trees. "Medic! Medic! Medic!" rose from dust-hoarse voices in the canes. Baker Company was truly held up and they couldn't go back. A young staff sergeant ran his M-1 carbine dry, then realized he needed a lot more firepower than he had. He crawled back to a light machine gun and dragged it forward. There was only one place to set up the machines gun for accurate fire on the enemy guns. Out in the open. The non-com dashed out, set up the gun, sighted quickly and opened fire, stitching a row of bullets along the rim of the enemy position. The enemy fire died away. "Come on!" yelled the young sergeant. He ran forward and opened fire with his carbine. One of his men followed and hurled grenades until he was killed. Then the sergeant began throwing them. When the smoke cleared the young non-com was master of the hill and B Company advanced. The sergeant was a hard-bitten veteran of the fighting in Sicily. He had been in the bitter sightings near Salerno and he had fought a long the bloody Volturno River. At Anzio, which almost ended in the Germans driving the Americans back into the sea, he gained his staff sergeancy and command of a platoon of veterans, and later he had led them on the advance to Rome. He was just a few months past his nineteenth birthday when be brought his platoon ashore at Yellow Beach. His name was Murphy...Audie Murphy... The Seventh Army drove on toward the Vosges Mountains after the landings in southern France. Of an original complement of 235 officers and men in B Company, Fifteenth Infantry, Third Division, which had landed in North Africa early in 1943, there were only a few originals left. Audie Murphy, who had joined in time for the Sicilian invasion, ranked as one of its veterans. The tough young combat soldier had learned to be a scrapper at an early age. Born in a sharecropper's cabin near Farmersville, Texas (near Kingston, Texas), June 20, 1925, he was one of eleven children crowded into a four-room shack with the father and mother. In 1939, the father deserted his ailing wife and eleven children and never came back. Audie became the family mainstay, borrowing a twenty-two-caliber rifle with which to hunt rabbits. When he didn't have cartridges, he used a slingshot. He worked at a variety of jobs. His mother died in 1941 and two of his sisters and one of his brothers were placed in an orphanage. While Audie was stationed at Camp Wolters, he sent every spare dime back to the orphanage. After basic training, he was shipped to Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, for fourteen more weeks of training, and there was continued a private war between Audie Murphy and his well-wishers. He was so slight and babyfaced that his officers seemed to want to protect him. At Camp Wolters, they had tried to ship him to Cooks and Bakers School, but he fought the idea. At Fort Meade, they tried to get him assigned as part of the permanent force, but he wiggled out of that. They placed him in the Post Exchange as a clerk, but somehow young Murphy managed to land in North Africa as an infantry replace for the Third Division. In the months that followed, Audie had seen many comrades get killed or seriously wounded. But somehow, despite his always being in the very thick of the fighting, he managed to avoid the fate of his comrades. In those months, he became skilled with Tommy gun, Garand rifle, M-1 carbine, Browning Automatic Rifle, and all other lethal tools the modern infantryman uses in the pursuit of his deadly trade. He wasn't always lucky in the strictest sense. A mortar shell had exploded between his feet in France, and the concussion had knocked him out and broken the carbine in his hands. But, even then, his only real injury was a wound in the heel. The weather had turned cold. The Germans were masters of the art of the slow, stubborn, retreat, and the Third Division had suffered heavily. The terrain was thickly wooded, and, though frost was thick on the ground every morning, during the day General Mud took over and units had to plow through the icy gumbo. Audie's company had been in the thick of it. One day he was called back to regimental headquarters where he and two other bearded non-coms were field-promoted to second lieutenants. The officer who promoted them shook their hands, smiled, and told them,'You are now gentlemen by Act of Congress. Shave, take a bath, then get back into the lines." Later, after three days of tough fighting through endless woods and fields, Second Lieutenant Audie Murphy was leading a B Company platoon. The dawn had been cold and the October day was raw. The American artillery had opened up with a a roaring, walking barrage behind which the Third Division was to advance. Lieutenant Murphy led his men off the trail and as he did so a rifle cracked flatly and his walkie-talkie radioman, who was only a few feet away, fell with a bullet hole just above the left eye. "Sniper!" yelled Murphy as he jumped for cover, a fraction too late. A red-hot iron slammed against his hip. Audie raised his carbine. There was a slight movement as a camouflage covering was lifted from a foxhole. The carbine spat flame and the sniper was dead. Bad weather had slowed Murphy's journey to the hospital, and when he got there the doctor found that gangrene had set in. It had cost Audie several pounds of infected flesh, which he could ill afford to spare, but in time, he had recovered. He was needed in the line. The mortality in combat officers was terribly high. The dull light of dawn spread across the woods and fields near Holtzwihr, France, the morning of January 26, 1945. There was a gloomy, foreboding look about the woods. The back-etched tree trunks and branches stood out against the knee-deep snow. An icy wind swept down from the Vosges Mountains and cut through thick woolen clothing. Audie's B Company had been given order to "drive to the edge of the woods facing Holtzwihr, dig in...and hold." They had reached the edge of the woods facing Holtzwihr, all right, but digging into the frozen earth was another matter. And there was yet another part of the order to be fill...to hold the ground. Audie stamped back and forth. It was no place for a warm-blooded Texas boy. He could hear the men muttering. They didn't know the grand strategy of war--nor did he, for that matter. An infantryman's field of vision is limited from one ditch to another; one tree trunk to the next; one empty clip of ammunition to the next loaded one. But it was clear that the veteran Third Division was having one of the hardest fights of its distinguished career. They had reached the Rhine, and beyond the Rhine was Germany. Some American units had already crossed that famous river. But the job of the Third Division was to eliminate the Colmar Pocket, a strongly fortified area reaching south to the Swiss border. The Colmar Pocket was a constant menace to the American advance. The Germans knew their business. They were posted in easily defensible position with fine fields of fire. They had plenty of armor and had the advantage of being on the defensive. Audie called battalion headquarters at dawn. "Where is our support?" he asked. "It will be up. Hang on. The attack will be delayed." Audie studied the cold woods and he didn't like what he saw. Holtzwihr was about a mile off across the fields. The church steeple showed up like a thin finger against the dull sky. Beside the road leading toward Holtzwihr were the two tank destroyers which had moved up during the night. Audie walked over to them and banged on the side of one of them. "Hey! Rise and shine! You'd better get these tin cans off the road! It's getting light! They'll blast you if you don't!" An officer stuck his head out. "If we move into those woods, we'll get bogged down," he growled. "You haven't any cover!" The officer yawned. "Maybe so, but we sure have a fine field of fire." Audie shrugged and walked over to his machine-gun squad. "How's your ammo?" he asked the sergeant. "Four hundred rounds, maybe." Audie whistled and shrugged. "Don't miss, Sarge." It was lonely there in the woods as the light grew. A lone artillery observer showed up, blue with cold. Audie rubbed his unshaven jaw and rang up headquarters again. "What's the scoop?" he asked. "No change. Hang on." "Yeah...hang on..." The long morning dragged by. Suddenly there was a rushing, whining noise in the air. The German barrage roared in, throwing up murderous clods of frozen earth, knocking out the machine-gun crew, hitting the first of the tank destroyers, killing three of the crew while the rest of them poured out of the smoking TD. Six tanks rumbled out of the town. They split up into sections of three each. One section disappeared into the woods on one side of the road and the other vanished into the woods on the other side. Audie whistled softly. "Here they come. Trying to flank us from both sides." White dots began to move across the snowy fields toward the American lines. German infantry wearing white snow caps. The second tank destroyer kicked over its engine and the unexpected roaring startled some of the newer men close by. The gears were meshed and then the heavy vehicle slid helpless into a ditch. The angle of the stranded vehicle made the guns useless. The crew wasted no time. They abandoned the helpless TD. The artillery observer raised his head. "I can't get headquarters yet!" he called out. Audie waved him back. "Pull out of here with that radio! I'll contact artillery by phone!" Audie had done artillery spotting before. He checked his map, estimated the enemy position, then ran the field phone. "Get me the artillery!" he snapped. "We're being attacked! Six tanks and a couple hundred infantry!' The American artillery opened up with smoke shell and then added high explosive, square on the German lines, scattering them like duckpins. Smoke drifted through the shattered trees. Audie stared down the road and then reached for the phone just as it rang. "How close are they?" came the question. Audie told them to keep firing between the Americans and the advancing enemy. Then the German tanks crashed through the woods and opened up almost at point-blank range on the outnumbered Americans. Audie cupped his hands about his mouth. "B Company pull out! We can't stop that armor with small arms! Pull out!" The men began to drift back. Out of 128 men and seven officers who had entered those woods at the start of the drive where were only forty men and one officer left...Audie Murphy. "What about you, sir?" yelled a non-com. Audie jerked an arm, pointing to the rear. "I'll stay with the phone as long as I can. Git!" The battered company slowly pulled back, leaving the scattered bodies of their comrades lying on the bloody snow. Audie called in some artillery corrections, then put down the phone to pick up his carbine. The Germans where a hundred yards or more from him. He shot carefully and began to drop one of the enemy after the other. It was too hot, though, for one lone American. Audie began to fall back and then he noticed the burning TD. A machine gun was mounted on it. He glanced back over his shoulder. The German tanks had veered off. The phone rang. "How close are they?" came the dry voice. Audie spoke quickly. "Just hold the phone and I'll let you talk to one of them!" He carried the field phone with him, dragging the wire after it until he reached the TD. He pulled the dead body of an officer from the burning vehicle. Then he jumped to the machine gun. It looked all right and there was plenty of ammunition. Audie cut loose with it at the line of advancing infantry. The heavy slugs chewed through the line and broke it. Something swished through the air and the TD seem to ring like a bell. A direct hit! And another one! The phone rang again. Audie mouthed corrections into it. Then he threaded a fresh belt into the machine gun and opened up again. Smoke from the burning TD was so thick he could hardly see through it. But the smoke helped, for the bewildered enemy could not tell where the fire was coming from. Audie did not realize at the time that the tanks and infantry men of the German forces were afraid of the gas and ammunition in the TD. If the flames reached them... The wind shifted and Audie saw a group of Germans crouched in the roadside ditch trying to figure out where he was. They found out too late. When the machine gun stopped firing, they were all dead. He reached for the phone. "Correct fire, battalion. Fifty over," he barked. "Are you all right, lieutenant?" came the anxious question. "I'm all right, sergeant. What are your postwar plans?" In a moment, the American artillery opened up on the new range Audie had given them and the woods became a nightmare of crashing shells, flying tree trunks, and dense smoke. Audie stared through the smoke. The German tanks had had enough. They were lumbering angrily back toward Holtzwihr, but the infantry were still in the woods and advancing along the road, practically on top of the burning TD where Audie held his phone. He raised the phone. "Correct fire: fifty over; keep fire for effect. This is my last change." "But that's your position!" "Fifty over, sergeant!" It didn't take long. Audie Murphy's position was soon the center of his own barrage, and the Germans broke completely. Audie shook his head. The concussion had been terrible and something warm was running down his right leg. He had been hit by German mortar fire. He dropped from the TD and limped through the woods, all alone. He found he company, reorganized it, then started right back through the woods with them in a savage counterattack. Later he called in artillery corrections and the accurate fire did not rest. On the plane that carried Lieutenant Audie Murphy back to the United States, he was the only junior officer among fourteen generals. But he had four rows of medals and campaign ribbons. The sharecropper's kid from Farmersville, Texas (Kingston-Celeste), was famous. Among his twenty-three decorations, he had the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with two clusters signifying that he had won that decoration three times, the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Purple Hear with two clusters indicating that he had been wounded three times. He had been personally decorated by General De Lattre De Tassigny of France with the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre. He was World War Two's most decorated soldier at the age of twenty years. The Fifteenth United State Infantry of which Audie Murphy was a member during World War Two had been station in China for many years. On the lower half of their colorful regimental insignia, they have a coiled Chinese dragon and below the dragon is the motto "Can Do." Audie must have remember that motto as he stood alone in the wrecked and burning tank destroyed near Holtzwihr, France, and watched six enemy tanks and over two hundred enemy infantry men closing in on him. "Can Do!" (THEY MET DANGER, pp. 142-160)