In a major new biography, veteran military historian
and WII biographer, Charles Whiting combines both
talents to tell the tale of barefoot Texan
share-cropper's son, who could barely read and write,
but became not only the US Army's most decorated soldier
in its 250 - year history, but also the star of forty
Paramount produced movies: most of which are shown on TV
screens around the world to this very day. The
gentle-eyed, baby-faced hero had won every decoration
the United States had to offer before he was eligible to
vote and killed 240 enemy soldiers in the process. Luck
made him a movie star. Always he tried to improve
himself, but time and time again he was relegated to the
'horse operas', where as he wisecracked cynically, ''it
was the same old movie, only they changed the colour of
the horse.'' But there was a price to pay for his
heroism in drugs, nervous tension and Murphy's addiction
to violence. Even as a middle-aged movie star, he always
slept with a .45 beneath his pillow, plagued by
nightmares of the war. Murphy had been an ordinary boy,
who had volunteered to go to fight and did so with
exceeding bravery in the last 'good war'. He paid highly
for that bravery and sense of duty to a country which
had given him nothing save ''malnutrition,'' as he used
to quip. He was that last American Hero, who did as
President Kennedy proclaimed, '' Don't ask what your
country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your
country.'' Even before his young life had really
commenced, he had become a legend. But in the end
'Tinseltown' and the 'feather merchants' of Hollywood
broke him. As Time magazine commented on his death;
''Audie Murphy belonged to an earlier, simpler time, one
in which bravery was a cardinal and killing was a
virtue... We shall not see his like again.'' |
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