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Audie Murphy is without a doubt one of the greatest men to ever live. Here's a full list of his awards:
The Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest honor available after the Medal of Honor, was awarded for his actions in Anzio. After killing two Germans with his carbine, Murphy ran out of ammo. He retreated back down the hill, took a light machine gun from a soldier unwilling to advance, and used that to destroy multiple German machine gun crews, along with his best friend, Lattie Tipton. Tipton was killed when a German machine gunner pretended to surrender. Now alone, Audie killed the gunner, the rest of the gunners crew, then pretty much everything else on the hill unlucky enough to be wearing the wrong uniform. When the rest of the platoon finally caught up, Audie was sitting guard over Tipton's body.
Here is his full Medal of Honor Citation. Keep in mind as you read that Audie had malaria for the entire duration of the war:
During the event that earned him his Medal of Honor, an officer asked Audie over the radio how close the Germans were. He responded, "Hold on and I'll let you talk to one." After returning from the war, Audie Murphy suffered heavily from PTSD and got addicted to pills, at which point he locked himself in a hotel room for a week until he got over it. He became an actor after writing his autobiography, To Hell and Back, and starred as himself in a film adaptation of the same in 1955, which remained the highest grossing film up until Jaws. He downplayed significant elements of the Medal of Honor citation event in the film because he thought people would accuse him of making it up. When he was shooting a film in Vietnam in the fifties, he was so horrified by the conditions there that he emptied most of his earnings into an orphanage in Saigon. He became involved in the drug war when he visited an addict's home with a policeman friend and saw the addict's two young daughters playing on a dirty floor. He helped bring about more than twenty convictions. In 1970, he was tried for attempted murder after getting into a fight with a 6'3" man who had abused a dog belonging to Murphy's female friend, and who had also sexually harassed the friend. The man claimed Murphy had fired a gun at him after a scuffle, Murphy's response to which was, and this is a direct quote, "I think it is injurious to my reputation to think that I could fire a shot at a target as large as Mr. Gofstein and miss." He was acquitted after the rest of his defense boiled down to, "If I had wanted to kill you, Mr. Gofstein, you would not be here now."
If I could spend one hour with anyone, alive or dead, it would be Audie Murphy.
@PrinceHabib72 holy shit this guy was a badass, the fact that he literally won a court case saying that "f i had wanted to kill you, you would not be here." Is such a badass move, what did the Judge think of it? What did the Lawyers think of it?
Well, he was acquitted after five hours of deliberation, so it must have been pretty convincing. As for how they responded to that specific quote, I'm not sure, as that- while a true quote- didn't occur in the courtroom. I looked into it further and the first mention I can see of it is in the San Bernardino County Sun on Friday, June 5th, 1970, and he said it to reporters.
@PrinceHabib72 damn, what happened to the guy that accused him of shooting?
He'd been in and out of the legal system for violence both before and after the Murphy trial. As for where he is now, I have no clue.
@PrinceHabib72 Damn, Audie Murphy was some serious badass