Category: Audie Murphy

Operation Dragoon: The Landing

Audie Murphy recalled landing on French soil

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 24

August 15, 1944. From Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back:

Audie Murphy later described the landing in southern France in his autobiography To Hell and Back. He recalled that, technically, the operation was considered perfect. The assault had been calculated to the smallest detail, every movement coordinated so that the effort unfolded with the smooth precision of a machine.

Compared to earlier invasions, resistance here was light. Weeks before, Allied forces had already broken out of Normandy and were cutting through northern France like a flood bursting through a levee. On the eastern front, the Russians were hammering the German armies. Overhead, American bombers were grinding German cities to rubble. Murphy likened Germany’s situation to that of a man hiding in a stolen house, frantically running between front and back doors as justice pounded from both sides—only to realize too late that another force was now rising up through the cellar. His regiment, Murphy observed, was that third force.

Landing craft on D-Day August 15. More than 90,000 amphibious and 9,000 airborne troops participated in the initial two-day southern France landings. Photo: NARA

Yet the men in the landing craft knew nothing of this sweeping strategic picture. They saw only the edge of the boat, the immediate shoreline, and the moment that lay before them. Their first objective was a narrow, harmless-looking strip of sand called “Yellow Beach.” It was early morning in mid-August; a thin mist hovered above the flat fields beyond the shore, and beyond that, quiet green hills rose inland.

Photo: Dogface soldiers collection

The bay between St. Tropez and Cavalaire was crowded with the familiar pattern of an amphibious assault. Battleships had already given the coastline a thorough pounding and now drifted silently in the background. Rocket craft followed, launching volleys that hissed through the air like schools of strange metallic fish, exploding mines and shredding barbed wire while rattling the nerves of the Germans waiting on shore.

Photo: Dogface soldiers collection

Under this barrage, scores of landing boats churned forward. Murphy stood in one of them, gripped again by that old, stomach-knotting fear that always came before action. Around him, his men crouched like miserable, soaked cats. Some were seasick; others sat glassy-eyed, lost in the kind of inward withdrawal that came just before battle.

And then, in the midst of dread, Murphy felt the absurdity of the moment. Here they were—small, cold, wet men—thrust into a riddle vast as the sky. He laughed, as he often did when confronted with the enormity of life and death.

Photo: Dogface soldiers collection

As the boats drew nearer, Murphy tried to rally his men by urging them to sing. They weren’t interested. But singing had long been a way soldiers kept fear in check, anger in rhythm, and marching in step. The Third Division even had its own song—Dogface Soldier—written in 1942 by two of its own, Sgt. Bert Gold and Lt. Ken Hart, both from Long Beach, New York. The division commander, Lucian Truscott, liked it so much he made it official. Third Division soldiers sang it, marched to it, and danced to it.

Years later, in 1955, when Murphy played himself in the film To Hell and Back, the song made its public debut. It became one of the most well-known songs of the war, celebrating not heroes of legend, but the ordinary infantryman—the “dogface” soldier who carried the rifle, slogged the mud, and shouldered the daily weight of the war.

The lyrics—simple, proud, and rough-edged—captured exactly who they were:

I Wouldn’t Give A Bean
To Be A Fancy Pants Marine
I’d Rather Be A
Dog Face Soldier Like I Am

I Wouldn’t Trade My Old OD’s
For All The Navy’s Dungarees
For I’m The Walking Pride
Of Uncle Sam

On Army Posters That I Read
It Says “Be All That You Can”
So They’re Tearing Me Down
To Build Me Over Again

I’m just a Dogface Soldier, 
With a rifle on my shoulder, 
And I eat a Kraut for breakfast every day. 

So Feed Me Ammunition
Keep Me In the Third Division
Your DogFace Soldier’s A-Okay

Ch. 25: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/07/ready-to-leave-poor-italy/

Goodbye to the Boys

Chapter 22: My Mother and Audie Murphy

August, 1944. Operation Dragoon—the Allied invasion of Southern France—had been debated for months. Originally, it was supposed to launch alongside the more famous Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. But the top brass couldn’t agree. Resources were stretched thin, and priorities clashed. Was it wise to open a second front in France? Could they even pull it off?

Part of the Operation Dragoon invasion fleet anchored off Naples. Photo: NARA

Meanwhile, thousands of young men trained on the sunbaked beaches near Naples, waiting for orders that never seemed to come. Tension hung heavy in the air. They practiced amphibious landings again and again, sand grinding into their boots and rifles, minds on the fight ahead—or trying not to think about it at all.

By August, the go-ahead finally came. Operation Dragoon would launch on August 15, with landings near St. Tropez. The plan: storm the beaches, push inland, liberate Marseille, and link up with the northern forces. It would be a massive undertaking, one that might finally break the German grip on Southern France.

In the ports around Naples, everything sprang into motion. Soldiers, tanks, trucks, jeeps, crates of ammunition and rations—all were loaded onto the towering LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank). The docks were a blur of noise and movement. Beneath the logistical precision, though, was something quieter, more personal: goodbye.

Loading the LSTs

The Red Cross women were there, as they always were—on the edges of history, offering comfort, coffee, and smiles to boys about to disappear into war.

On Monday, August 7, Flo wrote in her diary:  

“Served 3rd Div. leaving from Baia. Said goodbye to Stonie, Rick & Miles & part of 36E. Last date with Gene. Went to beach. Hated to say goodbye. Love him in spite of resolve.” 

The day before, Flo had written in her diary, “Decided I want to marry Gene.” He was now her fiancé, and they were parting ways, perhaps for the last time.

The next day, August 8, she wrote:  

“On beach at Nisida. Mostly Infantry—7th & 30th. Saw Gus, Buzz and all the rest of 1st Bn. Hot & dirty. Worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.”  

What a gigantic operation! Photo: NARA

Twelve-hour shifts, in the heat and dust, trying to give each man a sense that someone saw him, that someone cared. How do you say goodbye to that many young men, most of them barely more than boys? How do you smile through it, knowing many might never come back?

When the last ships pulled out, the docks were quiet. The women packed up their things, broke camp, and moved into Naples near headquarters. Flo wrote:  

“Much baggage. Helped 45th girls at Pozzuoli. Also 36th Div. leaving there. Very hot, busy and tired. LST ensign gave me dozen eggs. Exhausted after days of saying goodbye to thousands of boys en route for invasion.”  

Photo: NARA

Now they waited. The invasion was set for August 15. First, the troops would land. Then they’d have to fight their way inland, clear the Germans, secure the roads. Only then would Flo and the other ARC staff be allowed to follow, to bring comfort once again to the weary, wounded, and grieving.

In the silence of the following days, Flo thought of Gene. And of Stonie, Rick, and Miles. And of the thousands of names she never knew—just faces, voices, laughter fading down the gangplank.

Ch. 23: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/27/on-leave-sorrento-and-capri/

In the Tent City Near Pozzuoli Italy

My Mother and Audie Murphy ch. 18

Pozzuoli, Italy—In the sweltering summer of 1944, the 3rd Infantry Division assembled near this small resort town, joining the 36th and 45th Divisions in preparation for a high-stakes amphibious invasion of southern France. These battle-hardened troops, fresh from the grueling Anzio campaign and the march to Rome, were now under the Seventh Army’s command, sharpening their combat readiness for the next major offensive.

(L-R) Flo, Dottie and Jingles serve the 803rd Ordnance Co.
Flo hands out donuts with a smile
Isabelle Hughes serves soldiers on the docks returning from a training mission
Lunch with the “boys”

Among them was an unassuming but vital group—Flo and her clubmobile squad—who arrived in June to serve the men a taste of home: fresh donuts and hot coffee. Stationed in a sprawling tent city, these women had to get creative without a clubmobile truck, the specially outfitted vehicle designed for donut-making on the go. Instead, they improvised, scrounging up transportation and setting up makeshift field canteens in the dusty camps where soldiers could grab a sweet treat before heading back to drills. They were assisted by “donut boys,” soldiers who manned the donut machine in a tent kitchen.

Flo on the left
Flo and the “boys”
Isabella, Flo and Dottie serving at bivouac
Flo serving at night

Flo meticulously recorded her daily work in a diary that read like a military log, listing the units she and her team served, often during the darkest hours of the night. Her notes mentioned names that would later be etched in history: the 1st Battalion of the 30th Infantry Regiment, the 441st Co. A+B, the 9th Field Artillery, the 36th Combat Engineers. On one occasion, on July 16, she may have even handed a donut to a young soldier named Audie Murphy—the future war hero and Hollywood star—though she dryly noted the day as “quite dull.” Murphy, in his autobiography, recalled the 1st Bn. 15th completing amphibious training earlier in the year, which likely explains their limited encounters at Pozzuoli.

One entry stood out: service to the 442nd Ack Ack (Anti-Aircraft Battalion), part of the legendary segregated Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. These soldiers, despite facing discrimination at home, were training for a mission that would cement their reputation as one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history.

Flo’s diary (pinch out to read)

Photographs from this period, many taken by the 3rd Signal Company, capture Flo and her fellow workers hard at work. These combat photographers, who had joined the division at Anzio, developed and printed their images in a darkroom trailer, documenting the war in vivid, unfiltered detail. Their images offer a rare glimpse into the everyday moments behind the front lines. For more see dogfacesoldier.org, a website dedicated to their photos and the 3rd Division.

Ch. 19: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/05/a-sisterhood-on-the-front-lines/

Foot soldiers in Rome

Infantrymen’s time in Rome is no triumph

My Mother and Audie Murphy ch. 16

June, 1944. From Murphy’s autobiography, To Hell and Back:

There is no triumph in Rome. The city is only another objective along an endless road of war. During the long, bitter months on the Anzio beachhead, the men dreamed of entering Rome in celebration. They imagined drinking, swaggering through its streets, losing themselves in indulgence and release. But when the city finally falls and they do enter, the feeling is nothing like victory. They pitch their tents in a public park and sleep with a depth that borders on collapse, waiting for something like life to return to their bodies.

They move through Rome like ghosts. The grand architecture and ancient monuments hold no power to lift the heart. Murphy feels as if he has been briefly spared from death, but the sparing brings no relief. Joy is impossible until the war is truly over. On the streets, surrounded by civilians, he feels lonelier than he did in the mud and gun smoke of the front. The men know others are still fighting to the north, and their thoughts remain with them.

As the front lines move forward, rear-echelon troops flood into the city. Their clean uniforms and easy laughter provoke an irrational resentment. The infantry still carry the smell of mud, cordite, smoke, and decay. They look at the rested, polished soldiers and feel a gulf that cannot be crossed.

One night, the resentment turns into a brawl. Murphy and his men clash with a group of air corps troops in a café. Chairs break, glass shatters, and bodies slam across tables until the military police arrive and shut it down. The MPs warn them not to return.

Day by day, Rome becomes less meaningful. The men begin drifting back to camp earlier, choosing their own company over the city. They gather in small groups as dusk settles, sharing bottles of wine. The songs they sing together come from home, from childhood, from a world untouched by war. The singing softens something inside them—feelings that have been buried beneath survival. The tenderness is temporary. It disappears the moment the order comes to shoulder their weapons and move again.

They leave Rome for another training ground, not knowing what operation lies ahead. Rumor fills the silence, but certainty is impossible.

Their next destination is the coast of southern France. 

Ch. 17: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/03/25/playbill-from-irving-berlins-show/

Anzio: Advance, retreat, repeat

Fear is moving up with us. Fear is right there beside you.

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 14

Audie Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back was shaped in collaboration with David McClure, a Hollywood writer who served in the Army Signal Corps and knows firsthand the shock of war. The book centers on the ordinary infantrymen of the Third Division, capturing their humor, fatalism, and endurance. In the battle scenes, the tone sharpens. At Anzio, Murphy describes the brutal churn of attack and counterattack in a landscape where the ground itself seems to resist survival.

“Anzio Annie” was a massive World War II German rail gun, used to bombard US and British forces during the 1944 Anzio landings. It was one of the largest land-based cannons ever built. It fired shells that weighed 550 pounds. Image: NARA

“Light trembles in the east. To our left, an artillery dual is growing fiercer. We hear the crack and thunder of our own guns; the whine and crash of incoming German shells. (A soldier) stands in his chest deep foxhole and leans with his elbows on the bank. He studies the eastern horizon and shakes his head in mock ecstasy. “Gee!” says he, “another beautiful day.”

By afternoon, the order comes: attack!

“Fear is moving up with us. It always does. In the heat of battle it may go away. Sometimes it vanishes in a blind, red range that comes when you see a friend fall. Then again, you get so tired that you become indifferent. But when you are moving into combat, why try fooling yourself. Fear is right there beside you….

“I am well acquainted with fear. It strikes first in the stomach, coming like the disemboweling hand that is thrust into the carcass of a chicken. I feel now as though icy fingers have reached into my mid-parts and twisted the intestines into knots….”

Hidden in a railway tunnel, the Anzio Annie guns started firing at the Anzio beachhead in February and were not discovered until May. Image from Flo’s album

Speech dies away as they approach the enemy line. Artillery fire slackens, and the men check their weapons one last time. Scouts creep forward. Everyone waits for the first eruption.

“This is the worst moment. Just ahead the enemy waits silently. It will be far better when the guns open up. The nerves will relax; the heart, stop its thumping. The brain will turn to animal cunning. The job lies directly before us: destroy and survive.” 

The scouts signal them on. Just as they inch forward, two hidden flakwagon guns open fire. One scout is hit squarely in the chest; his upper body disintegrates in an instant. The 20 mm shells, designed for aircraft, are used here against men, each strike exploding on impact. There is no time to think; the entire landscape erupts with automatic fire. Branches shear off the trees overhead. Bullets pitch into the earth. Two men in the open scramble for the shelter of a small rise, but the gunner finds his range. They collapse, still at last.

Annie’s threat was physical, but also psychological. The troops lived in constant fear of the next shell whose passage was compared to a freight train passing overhead. It could blast a whole big enough to swallow a jeep. Image from Flo’s album

The scouts signal them on. Just as they inch forward, two hidden flakwagon guns open fire. One scout is hit squarely in the chest; his upper body disintegrates in an instant. The 20 mm shells, designed for aircraft, are used here against men, each strike exploding on impact. There is no time to think; the entire landscape erupts with automatic fire. Branches shear off the trees overhead. Bullets pitch into the earth. Two men in the open scramble for the shelter of a small rise, but the gunner finds his range. They collapse, still at last.

A massive shell shrieks overhead and Murphy dives into a roadside ditch. The blast lifts him, knocks him senseless, then dumps him back into the mud. When he crawls forward to check the man beside him, the soldier lies dead with no visible wound—killed by pure concussion. Murphy marks the body for the burial team, driving the bayonet into the bank and tying a strip of white cloth to its tip.

German artillery intensifies. The earth becomes a furnace of shrapnel and fire. Limbs and fragments of bodies fall back to the ground with the dirt. Night offers no rest. The foxholes are cold, wet, and shallow. Rumors spread that the entire front has been forced back. The men are told they will attack again in the morning.

Exhausted and hollow-eyed, they rise. The numbness of survival replaces fear. When the order comes, they move like machines. German artillery meets them immediately, and the men spread across open fields, advancing from one shell crater to the next. Medics, unarmed and clearly marked, fall beside the wounded they are trying to save. The cycle continues: advance, retreat, advance, retreat. After three days, not a single yard of ground has been gained.

There were two of these guns. Once they were captured, soldiers climbed on them “like game hunters who had bagged two rogue elephants.” Image from Flo’s album.

This was the story of Anzio. The Allies made the first amphibious landing on the beachhead on January 22, 1944 and the battle didn’t officially end until the liberation of Rome June 4, 1944.

The 3rd Infantry Division suffered over 900 casualties in one day of combat at Anzio. This was the highest number of casualties suffered by any US division in a single day during the war. The Allies sustained 40,000 casualties at Anzio.

The battle leaves no one unchanged. Anzio becomes not just a place, but a memory carved in mud, smoke, concussion, and loss—the memory of men who advance, fall, rise again, and return to the line because there is no choice except forward.

Flo captioned this picture “Kraut graves.” The Nazis sustained 43,000 casualties at Anzio.

Quotes are from Audie Murphy’s autobiography, To Hell and Back

Ch. 15: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/03/16/rome-is-liberated-by-allies/

Attack at Anzio

Malaria returns and Murphy confronts “Old Army” authority

My Mother and Audie Murphy ch. 12

January 1944. The squad is engaged in simulated combat. For three days they storm a dummy beachhead. They leap from landing craft and, falling, crawling, and firing, advance upon assigned objectives. Then the maneuvers end abruptly. The men are placed on strict alert, confined to the company area, and given one day of rest except for a final inspection of equipment. They recognize the signs. Everyone whispers “tomorrow.” Chaplains hold services. Letters are written with particular care. Still, no one knows the destination.

Murphy is sick again with malaria. Refusing to complain, worried that it will seem he’s trying to avoid combat, he’s finally turned in by a man in his squad. With a temperature of 105, he’s sent to a hospital in Naples. 

Then, after less than a week in hospital, Murphy is among a boatload of replacements headed for Anzio. Murphy can’t wait to rejoin his squad. He has missed the first several days of the Anzio attack.

From a Life Magazine story in Flo’s album

Ignoring orders to stay in camp, he walks toward the front. In a farmhouse where the command post has been set up, he learns that several men in his squad have been killed or maimed. Just as he feared, the Nazis have devastated his group, soldiers who have become like family after surviving the hell of war together.

At divisional headquarters, Murphy encounters the old hierarchy of the Army. A regular army sergeant, irritated by the informality of wartime soldiers, confronts him and orders him to unload his pack for a work detail. Murphy refuses. The sergeant threatens discipline; Murphy tells him to come find him at the front if he wants to press the issue. Slinging his carbine over his shoulder, he turns and heads up the road marked with the blue diamond of his regiment.

Americans at home depended on Life Magazine for news of the war.

That night, on the way to Cisterna, Murphy leads another reconnaissance patrol behind enemy lines. They discover that the Germans are moving tanks in–an ominous sign.

He reports to the lieutenant’s dugout. The lieutenant sits in a deep muddy hole, the roof made of poles, grass, and sod. Water seeps in from the sides. Bandoleers of cartridges and a case of grenades lie stacked in the corner. He looks as though he has not slept in days.

This, now, is home. A foxhole. Mud, cold, and the sound of artillery. The front line stretches ahead into darkness, and there is no certainty of what tomorrow will bring—only that tomorrow is coming.

Ch.13: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/03/06/flo-arrives-in-italy/

Loose Lips Sink Ships

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 11

May, 1944. On the Ship to Naples 

“Loose lips sink ships.” That was the mantra drilled into the heads of American Red Cross (ARC) women during their training in Washington, D.C. If the FBI discovered that a secret had leaked because of something you said or wrote, you were sent home. 

One instructor drove the point home with a cautionary tale: An ARC worker had called her parents in Montana, mentioning that she was in Colorado on her way to San Francisco. Her mother told the butcher, who told someone else, and within three hours, the FBI had traced the leak back to her. As a result, an entire convoy was delayed. 

Flo took these warnings seriously. While she wrote to her mother in Yakima regularly, she was careful never to include anything that might be considered classified.  

The Pentagon, opened 1943, displaced a Black town.

Fast-Tracked for War  

The usual six-week training program had been slashed to just two weeks to push the women through faster. The military issued them canteens, helmets, and web belts, alongside yet another round of security warnings. Phone calls and letters were discouraged. Training even covered how to handle a poison gas attack, complete with gas mask drills.  

Flo and her cohort began training on April 17, 1944. By May 8, they had their embarkation orders. On a warm May morning, the ARC women, clad in winter uniforms, marched two abreast to Union Station, where they boarded a train to New York City. From Penn Station, they were shuttled by bus to Brooklyn and housed at the massive St. George Hotel. There, they waited—alongside countless other uniformed Americans—until it was time to ship out.  

No one knew where they were going. Not even the ship’s officers were told their destination. Only the captain held that information, as wartime security dictated.  

The HNHS Atlantis

Aboard the HMHS Atlantis 

Flo’s ship, the HMHS Atlantis, was a British hospital vessel that had already survived encounters with German U-boats. The Germans ignored Geneva Convention rules that forbade attacking hospital ships—these vessels made tempting targets. During submarine alerts, the Atlantis would zigzag wildly to evade torpedoes.  

Once aboard, Flo learned that her destination was Italy, where she had been assigned to the North Africa theater. The ship carried British engineers, fellow ARC workers, and stacks of Italian phrasebooks. Flo tried to pick up a bit of the language during the long voyage.  

Crossing the Atlantic took nearly three weeks. To pass the time, Army journalists produced a daily mimeographed newsletter, Red Cross Currents, a few copies of which Flo saved in her scrapbook. She also kept menus and records of shipboard activities, which included:  horse racing (the cardboard variety), a contract bridge tournament, shuffleboard, deck quoits, “angell golf”, ping pong and deck tennis. Prizes were cartons of cigarets. 

Horserace program

Flo documented her voyage with snapshots—sunbathing with English engineers, uniformed officers on deck. Among the clippings in her album was an image of the newly built Pentagon, a source of national pride. What the public hadn’t been told, however, was that its construction had wiped out Queen City, a thriving Black town in Arlington, Virginia. The residents of the town were descendants of the residents of Freedman’s Village, which had been established by the federal government during the Civil War as a home for displaced freed slaves.

Letters, Friendships, and Missed Meetings  

Flo befriended an Irish engineer who worked on the ship, R.H. Wilkinson. They kept in touch throughout the war, attempting—but failing—to meet again. In August 1945, after the war had ended, Wilkinson wrote to her, reminiscing about their time on the Atlantis and asking for copies of photos to complete his scrapbook. He had since been deployed to the Pacific and was now stationed on the India run, where, as he put it, it was “very hot!” If she ever made it to Belfast, he promised, she would receive a true Irish welcome.  

Flo never did make it to Ireland.  

Sunning on the deck. Flo in the middle

First Glimpse of Naples 

As the Atlantis steamed past the lush, romance-laden Isle of Capri into Naples harbor, the passengers got their first look at war-torn Italy. The harbor was in ruins, bombed repeatedly during the Allied campaign to drive out the Germans. Though much of the destruction was confined to the waterfront, Naples itself—dirty, crowded, and overrun with American troops—had changed dramatically.  

A military-issued guide described the city in blunt terms:  

“The city of 1,000,000 still is the filthy, teeming tourist town, and now prices have trebled with the advent of thousands of Americans. There are gimcrack souvenirs, phoney tortoise-shell, dangerously bad wine and brandy, poor but expensive waterfront restaurants.

There are trips to Pompeii and Herculaneum, tours of Naples, and excursions up the slopes of Vesuvius (ARC trips). There’s an Allied Officers’ Club (dinner, drinks, dance, romance), an 82% venereally infected civilian population, an opera company and a symphony; buses, cabs, suburban trains; oranges, tangerines, grapes, lemons, and apples.  

And 50 miles to the northwest there is a war, of which occasional bombers remind Neapolitans on infrequent nights of the dimout.”

Stamped at the bottom: 

NO – SORRY – YOU CAN’T MAIL THIS PAPER HOME.  

From a Life Magazine story pasted in Flo’s album

A New Reality  

Flo later wrote to her mother, “The Rock of Gibraltar was the only stop our ship made on the way over, and it looked exactly like all the pictures we’ve seen. The Isle of Capri, I saw in a very early morning light, and it looked even more romantic that way.”  

In lovely spring weather they sailed into Naples May 27, 1944. Allied bombing over the course of many months had destroyed much of the ancient city. Of course, the port had been a prime target and so what the passengers of the Atlantis saw when they first laid eyes on Italy was the ruins of war, patched ably by the American engineers. For Naples was now in Allied hands. The Nazis had retreated north.

In event of capture, she will be treated as a captain.

Ch. 12: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/03/01/attack-at-anzio/

A Reprieve and a Little R&R

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 10

Naples suffers bombing by all

Autumn, 1943. After many weeks on the front lines, Audie Murphy and his squad are given a reprieve.

Crawling with filth and exhausted to the bone, they are pulled out of the lines in mid-November. The valley below is now clear of the enemy; Mount Lungo has fallen. From its heights, they look toward Cassino. The war drags north, its roar receding into the distance. Burial squads already move across the slopes, searching for the bodies of men who have received their final order to go forward.

As the squad makes its way on foot down a shell-torn road, the relief is almost intoxicating. Despite the lateness of the season, the day is bright and mild. A breeze whispers through the trees, and the solid earth beneath their boots feels strangely kind. The simple rhythm of marching renews their spirits. They look at one another with foolish affection, aware that they have been handed back life.

They are transferred to a camp with tents and two full meals a day. Orders soon come down: amphibious training at a beachhead near Naples. Discipline tightens, and day and night they drill against an unseen enemy. Fully armed, they wade through surf up to their hips and crawl belly-down through marshes, their clothes crusted with salt and mud.

Bombing of Naples

None of the troops know what the training will lead to. Rumors fly. Are they being prepared for an assault on southern France, to be sent to England for a cross-channel D-Day, for assault on some new beachhead? The dogface soldiers are always strangers to the plan.

The mood darkens. Many are certain they are being prepared for slaughter. Tempers fray, and old comrades come to blows over small provocations.

Murphy’s squad gets overnight passes to Naples.

Poor Naples. The city endures relentless bombing raids from 1940 into 1944. While under German control, the Allies bombard it continuously—first the French, then the British, and finally American bombers. Italy surrenders to the Allies on September 8, 1943, but the Germans refuse to relinquish their hold, murdering civilians and those who resist the ongoing occupation.  

Then, the citizens of Naples rise up against the Nazi forces. They successfully disrupt German plans to deport Neapolitans en masse to work camps, destroy the city, and block the Allies from securing a strategic foothold. A spontaneous insurrection erupts, and despite limited weapons and organization, the Neapolitans force the German troops to retreat just before Allied forces arrive.  

This dramatic rebellion is later depicted in Nanni Loy’s 1962 film “The Four Days of Naples”, which earns Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay.  

Even after Naples falls to British and American forces on October 1, 1943, the bombing continues. The Germans respond with a scorched-earth campaign, destroying communication and transportation networks, water and power grids, and mining buildings. They burn the state archives of Naples and the national library, sink ships in the harbor, and leave devastation in their wake. Within a week of its capture, however, the Allies manage to reopen the port, restoring vital access to the city.

On the night that Murphy and his squad rest and recreate in Naples, there is an air raid. Murphy doesn’t drink or smoke, but his men get drunk, and one gets rolled by a hooker, returning to camp without his coat, gear and money. Murphy is set up with a date, but he sleeps through it and the air raid as well.

Winter settles over Naples. The clock strikes three. Light from a low January sun creeps along stone walls and rooftops. The war is still close enough to feel—but for the moment, Murphy and his men live, rest, and wait for whatever comes next.

From Life Magazine October 18, 1943

“Last week Italy’s autumn rain was soaking the plain of Campania. It dripped on the date and peach trees, on vineyards heavy with unharvested grapes, and on the rich bottom lands north of Naples. It trickled down the necks of British and American soldiers slogging across the marshes toward the Volturno river and chilled the Germans, dug into foxholes across the river, in the shadow of Mount Massico. Somewhere in that area in the rain, the Germans would try to halt the relentless Allied advance. If they failed, the road to Rome would be open.

Behind the lines, Naples, slowly and painfully returned to normal. But the wounds of battle would not be healed for many months. The city was still practically without water, gas or electricity. In one terrible explosion on October 7, more than 100 civilians were killed when a delayed-action German mine destroyed the post office. Hungry, homeless children wandered the streets, and there was no medicine in the hospitals. German demolition squads have made a shambles of the waterfront. Shops were looted, the telephone building blown up, the University fired, and the tourist hotels ruined by Nazi troops before their retreat.”

Chapter 11: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/02/24/loose-lips-sink-ships/

American Red Cross Training

You are covered by the international rules of war

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 9

On Monday morning April 17, 1944 the three women from Washington state reported for training at the American University campus. They checked into a large classroom full of milling women and immediately lost track of each other. In the din Flo could hear accents from all over the country, and as she met and talked with the recruits, she was impressed by their high level of education and abilities.

At graduation, Flo was photographed with her Washington State counterparts–the Suksdorf twins and a woman from Seattle, Josephine Ryan. Flo at right.

That first day was mostly filled with speeches from ARC directors, none particularly memorable. Then, the trainees fell into a routine: up at 6am, lectures and exams starting at 8am.

One instructor they dubbed Theda Bara. She was a thin older woman, hair drawn severely back from her face, who had served in France during “the last show” as she called the Great War. She warned of the pitfalls and perils women face in situations where they are sometimes outnumbered by men 100 to 1.

The women were admonished to date only officers and to “be careful not to let your heads be turned by all the attention.”

“As ARC staff assistants you are considered officers if captured, the equivalent of second lieutenants, and you are covered by the international rules of war,” she told them. 

The women were allowed extra time to shop and they needed it. They hadn’t realized there was so much shopping involved–at their own expense. They were given one set of summer and winter Class A uniforms (dresses and skirts only; no pants), which they would need to have fitted. Flo was also issued a trench coat type raincoat, and a heavy topcoat with removable red lining. The Red Cross paid for the uniforms, but the women had to pay for a long list of required clothes and equipment. The list specified exactly how many white blouses, socks, cotton underpants, girdles, and cotton gloves they would need, plus odd items like canteen, web belt, musette bag (a shoulder bag, like a purse), boots, duffle bag and foot locker, leaving them to scurry all over town to track down every item on the list. 

In her new uniform with “uncle” Alf

Once she had been fitted for her new uniforms, Flo paid a visit to “Uncle” Alf. The Wick family’s dear old friend, Alfred May, lived in Washington and Flo had telegrammed him of her arrival. She hadn’t seen her gay “uncle” since he had visited the family in 1929 when her father was still alive. Uncle Alf had been her father Ben’s partner in the family chicken farm business in Oregon and he was a presence in the four daughters’ lives until the business went bust and he joined the Navy in WWI. Alf, the son of a costume making English family–whose clients it was said had included the Queen–had dressed the girls and himself in Shakespearean outfits and produced plays. Flo had made a quite passable Hamlet. Alf was still living with the family who had taken him in, though he had retired from his job at the Naval Academy. Flo and Alf were photographed together in front of Alf’s apartment.

Back at the training school, a teacher admonished the women. “Once you get orders you’re incommunicado until you reach your destination, which might take as long as two months.”

Chapter 10: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/02/17/a-reprieve-and-a-little-rr/

Surrounded by Nazis at the Volturno

Chapter 6: My Mother and Audie Murphy

October 1943. Murphy lands at Salerno during the Allied invasion of the mainland.

Clip from a Life Magazine story pasted in Flo’s WWII album

Italy has surrendered, and the road to Rome appears deceptively simple. Yet, the journey is anything but straightforward. Many thousands of lives will be lost on the road to the Eternal City.

“We land with undue optimism on the Italian mainland near Salerno. The beachhead, bought dearly with the blood and guts of the men who preceded us, is secure….We are prepared for a quick dash to Rome,” wrote Murphy in his autobiography, To Hell and Back.

This was far too optimistic. The Third Division will be fighting and dying on the Italian beaches and mainland until May, 1944.

The troops of the Third Division must first push through Salerno, cross the Volturno River, and take Anzio, Mignano, Cassino, and Cisterna before they can approach Rome.

Audie Murphy leads a small, diverse squad of men. Among them are an Italian immigrant, a Cherokee Indian manning the machine gun, an Irishman, a Pole, a Swede, and a Smoky Mountain bootlegger.

Members of Murphy’s squad begin to fall almost immediately. One soldier hesitates under heavy Nazi fire as he runs for a bridge and is cut down. The squad carries his body to the highway where it can be easily found.

“In death, he still bears the look of innocent wonder. He could not have lived long after tumbling. The bullet ripped an artery in his throat,” wrote Murphy.

Another fighter takes out a German machine gun nest and a foxhole with grenades, killing five Germans.

From Flo’s WWII album

The small victory is short-lived.

Later, the five remaining men find themselves trapped in a cave, surrounded by the enemy. The cave is infested with fleas, and the men are bitten mercilessly as they wait, parched and desperate.

We come to know and care for the men in Murphy’s squad, only to witness their deaths or injuries that force them out of the fight. Murphy becomes the last man standing at the end.

“All my life I wait to come to Italy,” says the Italian soldier. “I write my old man that the country stinks. Wait till you get to Rome, he says. Wait’ll you see your grandfather’s place. Then you’ll see the real Italy.”

The Italian never makes it to Rome. After three days without water, he breaks under the strain, running out of the cave only to be hit and killed by enemy fire. “He has come home to the soil that gave his parents birth,” wrote Murphy.

Finally, American troops break through the German lines and rescue the remaining men. Relief arrives with rations, water, and ammunition.

The next morning, they cross the Volturno River and join the push toward their next major objective: the communications center at Mignano.

Quotes are from Audie Murphy’s autobiography, To Hell and Back.

Chapter 7: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/01/30/train-to-d-c-april-1944/