Friend me on Facebook! on.fb.me/gCSs8F Today is the anniversary of the birth of Audie Murphy, the war hero/actor who's real life accomplishments make Rambo look like a sissy. Some of the jokes were taken from an article by Marc Russel which I shouldn't have done (I was writing in a haste, and the error of that didn't occur to me). ----- Audie Murphy was born in Kingston, Hunt County, TX. He grew up on a farm near Greenville, TX, and dropped out of school in the 5th grade to help support his family by plowing and picking cotton. Audie had always dreamed of joining the military, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor he tried to enlist, but was rejected as he was underage. In June of 1942 after his 17th birthday his sister "adjusted" his birth date so that he seemed to be 18, giving him the legal ability to enlist. He was turned down again and probably laughed at by the Marines and the U.S. Army paratroopers because of his short 5.5 inch height and for being a meager 110 lbs, both of which were under the minimum weight and height requirements for the military. He was eventually accepted and sent to basic training where he passed out during a drill. His company commander attempted to have him transferred to a cook and baker's school, but Murphy insisted on becoming a combat soldier. He accepted in, and after rigorous training was shipped to Casablanca, Morocco, and then Sicily. While in Italy he was promoted to corporal for his shooting skills and contracted malaria which he had for most of the war. Audie was then sent to Southern France, and on August 15th, 1944 he encountered a German machine gun crew that pretended that they were surrendering, but then shot Audie's best friend. Audie completely hulked out, killed everyone in the gun nest, and then used their weapons to kill every German soldier in a 100-yard radius, including two more machine gun nests and a bunch of snipers. Audie was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross (which is second only to the Medal of Honor), and made a platoon commander while presumably everyone else gave an apology for calling him "shorty". On January 26, 1945 he was given the job to defend a critical region in France called the Colmar Pocket, but all he had were 19 guys and a few M-10 tank destroyers. The Germans showed up with a bunch of men and a dozen tanks. Reinforcements weren't coming for a while, so Murphy and his men hid in a trench and sent their M10s to go attack. The tanks were badly damaged and instead of giving up, the malaria-stricken Murphy ran up to a crippled M-10, hopped behind the .50 caliber machine gun and started shooting at everything in sight. By the way, I forgot to mention that the tank he was on was on fire and had a full tank of gas. Audie kept it for about an hour until he ran out of bullets. He then got off the tank and walked back to his men as the M-10 exploded behind him, probably while in slow motion, a la epic action movie. Murphy was given every single medal out there, and then when they ran out of medals to give him they gave doubles of ones he already had, which racked his medal count to 33. After seeing Audie's photo on the cover of LIFE magazine, he was brought to Hollywood to be an actor. Over the next few years he didn't see much work and became very disillusioned, but in 1949 he got his big break in the movie Bad Boy. He went on to write his autobiography, To Hell and Back which was then made into a movie which he starred in as himself. He had parts of the film omitted so that the audience didn't think that he was exaggerating the events that happened or that he was making stuff up. For 20 years it was the highest grossing film that Universal Studios made It took a movie about a giant man-eating shark to top Audie Murphy's awesomeness. In his short career he acted in over 44 films, and in addition to his movie career he also became a country music song writer. On May 28, 1971, during Memorial Day weekend, Audie Murphy was killed at age 46 when his private plane crashed into a mountain near Virginia. Although there is a tragic ending to this story, the legacy of Audie Murphy live on. That's the history of Audie Murphy.

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