Chapter 4: He Sheds First Nazi Blood in Sicily
They nicknamed him Baby and he couldn’t shed the tag. Audie Murphy had to fight for his place in combat. From the beginning of his military journey, he faced skepticism at every turn. Rejected by the Marines and paratroops, he was finally accepted by the infantry.
Immediately his first commanding officer tried to shove him into a cook and baker’s school where the going would be less rough.
“That was the supreme humiliation. To reach for the stars and end up stirring a pot of C-rations. I would not do it. I swore that I would take the guardhouse first. My stubborn attitude paid off. I was allowed to keep my combat classification; and the Army was spared the disaster of having another fourth-class cook in its ranks,” he wrote in his autobiography.
In training, officers took one look at his skinny body and boyish face and tried to steer Murphy away from the front lines. At Fort Meade, one well-meaning officer attempted to save him from combat altogether by assigning him a clerical position at the post exchange. Again he stuck to his guns.
In July, 1943 he made it to the front in Sicily, but his youth and appearance worked against him even there. He was transferred to headquarters to serve as a runner. But Murphy wouldn’t stay away from the action. He repeatedly sneaked off on patrols and scouting missions. His determination eventually forced his commander’s hand. He was promoted to corporal.
By then, Murphy had already missed his chance to fight in North Africa. His convoy had docked in Casablanca only after the battles were over. Instead of combat, he endured more training—much to his frustration. “I just wanted to fight,” he later said.
Murphy finally got his chance in Sicily, but it was far from the glory he had imagined as a boy.
On his first day in combat, a mortar attack killed a young soldier sitting nearby. A boom, a whistle, the earth shakes, and the boy falls from the rock where he was sitting, just taking a break. As simple as that. One minute you’re sitting on a rock. The next minute you’re dead.
This was not the war Murphy had dreamed of. He had imagined men charging gallantly across flaming hills. Bugles blew, banners streamed, and the temperature was mild. Enemy bullets always miraculously missed, and his trusty rifle always hit home. As a kid, the dream was his escape from a grimly realistic world of poverty.
But now, as he trudged across the Sicilian battlefield, sweat soaking his uniform, his boyhood fantasies were shattered.
“Maybe my notions about war are all cockeyed. How do you pit skill against skill if you cannot even see the enemy? Where is the glamour in blistered feet and a growling stomach? And where is the expected adventure? Well, whatever comes, it was my own idea. I had always wanted to be a soldier,” he wrote.
His skill with a rifle, however, did not go unnoticed. In one skirmish, Murphy shot two German officers from their horses with two clean shots. He had shed his first blood. But he felt nothing except a weary indifference.
Even as malaria struck and forced him into a field hospital for a week, Murphy returned to the lines. The disease would haunt him throughout the war, but it didn’t stop him.
He had loved the idea of war, but it didn’t take long to hate the real thing.
“The Sicilian campaign has taken the vinegar out of my spirit. I have seen war as it actually is, and I do not like it. But I will go on fighting,” he wrote.
*Quotes are from Audie Murphy’s autobiography, To Hell and Back
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