Audie Leon Murphy was born on June 20, 1925, near Kingston, Texas. After his father abandoned them, his mother died when he was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Murphy’s older sister helped him falsify documentation about his birthdate to meet the minimum age requirement for enlisting in the military. Turned down initially for being underweight by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, he eventually was able to enlist in the Army
During World War II Murphy served as a combat soldier and killed hundreds of Germans; he once jumped onto a burning tank destroyer to turn its machine gun on enemy troops. Wounded three times, Murphy was awarded more than 30 medals for his bravery, including some by the French and Belgian governments.
Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.
After the war Murphy’s war heroics gained the attention of actor James Cagney, who convinced Murphy to come to Hollywood, California. Over the next 20 years, he appeared in more than 40 movies, most of them Westerns. Among the better-known films in which he starred were the American Civil War drama The Red Badge of Courage (1951), directed by John Huston, and the thriller The Quiet American (1958).
Murphy died when his private plane crashed on May 28, 1971, near Roanoke, Virginia. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
According to en.wikipedia.org; kids.britannica.com. Source of photos: internet
