Yep. At  minimum, he served.  He did not say "Well I wanted to join, but.........."

JFK's book that won a Pewetzer prize was ghost written.  IIRC Profiles in Courage.

This +1000.

Audie Murphy really accomplished those feats of heroism.

Op has watched too many of today's action movies and the bs contained in them.

This.

Watched the same thing happen to Dakota Meyer recently.

This +10,000

This post nailed it.

I left out the alcoholism because so much goes together with PTSD. I didn't know about the drugs but not surprised. My mom is 92. I asked her about Audie. She said everyone knew about the hell he suffered. People went to see his movies to show their gratitude as much as to be entertained. Most people knew a Vet who suffered some degree of PTSD, even my great uncle. who fought in the Pacific and another who fought in Europe. We never missed one of his movies at the drive-in, now I know why.

Real life legend and hero. Murphy becoming an actor, and a good one, just adds to legend status. An old friend of mine who passed away 24 years ago, Denny “Dinty” Arnold a stunt man legend* got into the movie business through Murphy. Murphy hired him in the early-mid 1960s to teach his kids how to ride horses professionally as Denny was a champion Rodeo star. Denny told me that Murphy suffered from really bad PTSD and used to sleep in his kitchen on an army cot with a loaded 1911 on his chest. He said that they used to play pool a lot in his rec room.  Denny always said that the way Murphy died wasn’t fair for a guy like that. True, and he died way too young.


* Set the record for the longest body drag behind a horse for a Boroteem commercial and set the world record for longest jump with a boat over an obstacle in the movie Gator with Burt Reynolds.

I disagree that they are all embellishments or outright falsehoods. Sure some are but not all.   I will say they are all told from someones point of view which can differ from person to person like opinions

For instance an incident during the Vietnam war where a fire base came under enemy artillery fire.   The battalion commander ran out of his bunker under fire and began personally firing the bases artillery pieces back at the enemy artillery.

2 different soldiers have written accounts witnessing this event.  One of the soldiers thought he was an idiot since his fire was ineffective and felt he was needlessly endangering his artillery men by doing this.   Another soldiers account was the exact opposite in his interpretation of the event.  He thought the commander was incredibly brave and was inspiring his men to fight back against the enemy attack.  Both soldiers were privates by the way.

They both agreed factually on the actual event but had different opinions on the act itself.

Now imagine only one of the accounts survived then you would be left with only one interpretation which could skew your view of the event one way or another.  

In this instance neither soldier lied about the event itself but put their bias in their point of view of the event.   This is what really happens in most historically accounts.   We are left with someone’s interpretation of an event and how they see it which may or may not be what another person might have thought of the event.

Only reason I give the drug abuse the honorable mention was the fact he had it. Recognized it. Locked himself in a motel room for a week to detox and beat it.

More of just another tick to the testament of his character.

All of those vets knew they would have attempted to do the same thing he did and many tried but they weren’t as lucky.

Only difference was Audie had the luck and the attention. It ate him alive for much of his life I think.

He was there, I was not......I'll not presume to judge the man

Attached File

FPMFNI!!!!!!

OP, it is not an award winning book for the artistic beauty of the writing, it is the true story of an American Hero!  Like the movie it is more of a tribute to his friends that died and lived through the war, then about him.

That's a great example of potential biases in historical accounts!

Rather than confuse him with some of the books written today based on the GWOT, understand his journey a bit.

He lived on a farm of poorly educated sharecroppers.
He dropped out of school in 5th grade.
Enlisted in the Army at 17.
America's most decorated soldier, probably killed over 200 people, all his friends dead, by 20.

The above aren't really in question.

Clearly he wasn't writing any books by himself.  His acting career was based on fame, not acting talent.
Technically, he wasn't Hemingway and the book wasn't really that great.
He had severe documented PTSD and probably didn't want the fame; he was unprepared for it. But he got swept along.
Most accounts indicate that he did a lot in the war that wasn't really written about as it was unbelievable.
There was no particular reason private or SGT Murphy was going to get awarded medals for things he didn't do.

Bottom line: A 17 year old kid with a 5th grade education killed over 200 people in a two year period.  Finish the book. Go read some comic books
written by English majors afterword if it makes you feel better.

I have to laugh when todays nobodies, who have never been anywhere, nor done anything even remotely similar jump up to tell the world that something they've never seen or done could ever be possible. Audies biography was of course written by a ghost writer since Audie had never completed school, having instead quit school to work on local farms to help support his family as a teen. Perhaps OP missed that in the early parts of the book?

The writing of such books in those days was not performed to 2024 standards, there were no pdf files, word templates, anime, and so on. Audie was real, and his exploits were very real, and very well documented. FWIW, men in those days were generally very poor at faking things. Audie was a bit stiff as an actor, but most actors in that era who came from war notoriety were simply thrust into acting by studios looking to make a few bucks off the actors fame. I seriously doubt Audie even enjoyed acting, but he needed to do something for a living and this was offered.

Audie Murphy was a legit hero who was taken over and owned by Hollywood agents. The book was made to promote the movie and the movie was made to promote the book.

Both sucked.

Not related to Audie Murphy exactly, but more about understanding probability.

Imagine someone does something really brave, or stupid, or both that has a 50% chance of getting them killed. Half the people who do that die.

And imagine that someone tries two such acts... 75% of them are dead. Three times and 87.5% are dead. Your odds of survival start getting really, really low.

But here's the kicker, if 1024 people start out taking those chances, one of them (on average) will still be alive after the 10th time.


You take some guy with some natural skills, decent training, and sufficient courage/recklessness/aggression to go charging into battle. Most of the time this guy gets killed, or killed the second time he does something like that, or the third, or the fourth... But there were millions of people in WWII and countless thousands had both the needed disposition and the opportunity to do what Audie Murphy did. The vast majority of them died in the fight, most are not remembered at all. Audie Murphy is remembered because he had the courage and skill to do what he did but also because he had the luck to survive. And as over the top as some of his heroics might seem, the laws of probability say we shouldn't be surprised that someone was able to do all of that and survive.

100% agree.

Our government and military has been shown to be as bad as any with the manipulation propaganda. I don’t believe any of the old war stories anymore.

Have you read the book? Modern Hollywood war movies are more believable than the dialog in that book.

I'm not saying he wasn't a badass, awesome dude in real life but the book is pretty shitty. It's clearly made up of major events that actually happened surrounded by exaggerations and ridiculously corny fictitious dialog.

Like someone else said, he told a writer his general story and the writer wrote the book like a Hollywood screenplay.

I don’t believe the book or movie did his exploits justice. They were done in that sappy post war glamour high that makes much of the stuff done then seem so over the top.

Certainly reality for him was much darker.

This is one of his non-CMH citations:

Audie Murphy earned the Distinguished Service Cross, America's second highest military award of valor, on August 15, 1944, shortly after his unit 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment and elements of the 3rd Infantry Division made an amphibious landing as part of the first assault wave in Southern France near Ramatuelle, France.

It was also during this event that Staff Sergeant Murphy, who was an acting platoon sergeant, lost his best friend Lattie Tipton.

The action began in the morning as Murphy's platoon, which was the advance element of the attack, attempted to capture "Pill Box Hill". Ordering his platoon to stay in their covered positions, Staff Sergeant Murphy moved forward to scout out any Germans obstructing his platoon's path up a hill. Murphy's men and other nearby platoons provided Murphy cover.

With his M-1 Carbine, Staff Sergeant Murphy moved up a hill using a draw which paralled the enemy's positions. Murphy killed two Germans who were moving down the draw towards him. After engaging enemy foxhole positions, he ran out of ammunition and reversed his direction back down the draw looking for another weapon.

Documentation
EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT
MAP DRAWING
AWARD ORDERS
Staff Sergeant Murphy found and took a light machine gun from a crew unwilling to advance forward. He left his carbine behind.

Murphy then moved back up the draw and positioned the machine gun above the German foxholes. He engaged and destroyed these positions.

As Murphy continued up the hill, a machine gun attacked. Murphy then returned fire but exhausted his ammunition. He returned back down the draw to retrieve his carbine. When he did, Lattie Tipton convinced Murphy to allow him to go back up the hill to help.

As the two worked their way back up the draw, they drew more enemy fire and grenades. Tipton was shot in the upper part of his ear but managed to shoot and kill his attackers. Murphy and Tipton then located, charged, and destroyed an emplaced machine gun on the top of the hill.

A second machine gun opened fire on Murphy and Tipton who managed to force it to surrender with rifle fire and thrown grenades.

Despite a panicked attempt by Murphy to stop his friend, Tipton was shot and killed as he exposed himself to a phony German flag of surrender.

In a fit of rage, Murphy destroyed the machine gun crew with more grenades. He then rushed the position. Murphy took its undamaged machine gun and began firing it from his hip. As he did, Murphy charged two remaining enemy machine gun positions that were trying to kill him. Murphy destroyed both of them which cleared the hill of all resistance.

Murphy returned back to the body of his friend and was overwhelmed with grief (Simpson, page 121-122).

The PTSD-induced alcoholism was probably behind most if not all of that.

S**t talking is so easy, isn't it.

But thanks for your service OP.

Trump would have told him that he’s too young to buy a gun when he returned home after service.

So uh, the Germans were shooting just like.... STORM TROOPERS?

Ba dum tish.

Have you read the book?

Do you think books that have people that never even existed are true stories?

How about I just stick to reading nonfiction accounts of true events with the events presented as close to the authors memory as possible? Plenty of other authors manage to do it.

Why don't you quote this section? I bet you can't find it, at least not in the copy I have. It has a single two page foreward by Tom Brokaw which doesn't say anything remotely like that and immediately jumps into "On a hill just inland from the invasion...".

In the steam riverboat days there was a crash and an inquiry. The official findings were "we may never know what happened, there were too many survivors."

To be fair, U. America has a history of being factual in their reporting of war-time incidents. Whereas Russia and their former satellite nations have a Slavic tradition of medieval embellishments.. add a collectivist spin on it from 1920 onwards. At least that's my take on it.

Still doesn't excuse how callous our military has been in this century with regards to say Rafael Peralta in Fallujah or Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. The former, I remember reading a book, a lot of "line" dudes were basically exhausted, and just ran it up for him to get a medal after being friendly-fucked.

Another memoir I'd suggest is "Thunder Below" about the USS Barb. It's written more as a logbook of the war with exposition and stories to fill in between.

I refuse to say anything bad about Audie Murphy. Man was a damn hero for god sakes. How many books have you written? How many movies did you star in? No man is perfect.

Pretty much everything our government tells us is a lie. Only makes sense the stories of heroism would be embellished to suit their purposes.

One of the biggest myths of the 20th century was portraying us as the good guy vs all our enemies. Our government really isn't much different then all the bad ones when you dig into it.

Murphy also suffered from PTSD
During the scene in the movie when Brandon was killed, Murphy re-lived the scene for real. He had a meltdown, that was "real" screaming BRANDON!!!!

No, he was not a really good actor, nor a writer.
Want to read bad writing? go read Boyington's Baa Baa Black Sheep. I think he was still drunk when he wrote it

Indeed

My dad had PTSD from fighting in the 88th Inf Div in Northern Italy. He was wounded. I can only imagine what he went through. War is hell. It's also a meat grinder. Some people do all the wrong shit and live, while others do all the right shit, and die.
The man was involved in multiple engagements of armed conflict, and he was fortunate enough, or cursed enough to survive. I've seen a man overwhelmed by survivor guilt. Now imagine how many times Audie Murphy survived while others around him died.

Did I make first ...

I felt the same way after reading John Mosby's book. Lots of self-aggrandizing and what seemed like overinflated accounts of his heroics. It was like he pissed on every Union soldier he met to establish dominance, with them always cowering at the sight of him and making themselves his prisoners.

The Marines wouldn’t have take him because he was too small.

Seems like his wife was pretty amazing person in her own right.

Spot on.

There is a unauthorized biography of Audie Murphy that is very good. It even goes into the postwar research that DoD conducted on Murphy's combat skills because they wanted to create hundreds of thousands of "Audie Murphies". They discovered that it was impossible for every kid to grow up outdoors in the open expanses of rural Texas, basically starving, doing manual labor so many hours per day that sleep deprivation happens, and having to make a quick shot on a suddenly appearing fast target(jack rabbit) with only one cartridge or your siblings go hungry.  It has been 40 years since I read that book.  I cannot remember the title.

I liked it.

I read the book last summer. Glad l read it, but l had the same feeling about it.  

Audie Murphy was my dad's boy hood hero.  We share the same middle name because of that.

How about you should set your radio to receive and not transmit.

America's most decorated soldier had PTSD, a 5th grade education, and left alot of stuff OUT.  If you read his DSC and Medal of Honor citation, then the book passages, you'd realize this.

Maybe you should go find another author then. You started this post.  Or go to war and write abook about it yourself.  The writing is the easy part. Usually doesn't get you killed.

History is a discipline.  Lots of first person depictions by men who accomplished alot, were written by men who weren't great writers. And left stuff out.

I'm currently with my nose in some of the unpublished works of James Jones and I can see why nobody would publish them in 1946. He told it like it was.

His description of Guadalcanal vets that had been stateside to recover and their anger at the war, the army, the entire system, horse's ass officers and NCOs, the whole shooting match. A lot of them just went AWOL when they felt like it and didn't GAF if they got busted for it or not. Why care? They knew they were getting sent back into the shit again when they recovered. Many returned as angry alcoholics to a completely changed world.

Of course every magazine posted that their son, husband, kid next door would be back to normal after a couple of weeks and now we ALL know that's bullshit.

Leckie in Helmet for my pillow got away with it to a certain extent because it was published in 1957, well over a decade after the war ended.

He did for an hour; it was a few minutes in the movie.
And he was standing on a burning vehicle full of gas and ammo.



I believe he was calling in artillery on his position as well

I just got this to read. My cousin, a submariner, recommended it.

What is the quote when asked what was going through his mind while on the back of the tank destroyer?

“It was the warmest my feet had been in a long time”

He was used to combat
Warm feet wasn’t a common event for him at that point.
Interesting perspective, really