Excellent! He survived all that to die in the crash of a light twin, an Aero Commander, when he was 46. He was cheated.

Audie Murphy was a true hero if ever there was one. In his movie "To hell and back", made 10 years after the war, he still looked wet behind the ears.

Good example of "it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog."

Thata a hell of a site! I made it a favorite.

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If you read Murphy's book "To Hell and Back"
you will see he wouldn't feel cheated at going
out at 46.

He should have been a dead man so many times
during his action in Europe that it is just amazing that he made it through WWII alive
and intact.

"To Hell and Back" is HIGHLY recommended reading
for anyone interested in WWII or Audie Murphy specifically.

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To Hell and back is right.He was a one man wre cking crew.If his story was not so well known no one would believe it.

Did any of you ever hear the story of how one night his wife switched off the lights in the bedroom after Audie was asleep, and it startled him so much that he rose and put three bullets from a pistol he kept under his pillow in the switch plate within inches of his wife's hand.

Soon after, she was his ex-wife.

Another story goes that he was hunting and, again, was startled by a noise behind him and he turned and fired, killing a bear cub. He is said to have sat down and sobbed over his mistake.

God knows the demons he must have lived with. One can only think his premature death must have come as a relief to his tortued soul.

The ugliness of war lived on with a lot of men until they died.

You can read a very good book about it called

"Goodbye Darkness" by William Manchester a Marine that fought on Okinawa.

Then there is "With the Old Breed at Pelelieu and Okinawa' by E. B. (Eugene) Sledge a Marine in both of the battles.

Then there are several books about Iwo Jima that are almost unbelievable.