Sipsey Street Irregulars: Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy

Killing, psychologists say, is “the single most pervasive, traumatic experience of war.” Second to this is the emotional distress experienced by observing violence and the death of friends and comrades. Murphy had done more than his fair share of killing and seeing others killed. Despite an appealingly fresh-faced and youthful appearance that stayed with him well into his adult years, his wartime trauma left him scarred. There was always a profound melancholy just under his surface along with a fatalism that was completely at odds with his image. The tension made him an interesting actor, but it came at a high cost.

3 comments:

Sean said...: Strange as it may seem, I remember a number of black soldiers that were exceedingly pleased at the death of Audie Murphy. I knew these guys personally, and when I asked them what they were so happy about, one said that "Audie Murphy ain't shit". Back in 1971, a lot of blacks had a very bad attitude in the Army. Don't know that it has improved any. I was saddened to see him go. I always looked up to him, not just because of his bravery, but because I'm 5'7". When, comes such another?; May 5, 2015 at 9:01 AM
Informed42 said...: Audie Murphy was one of my heroes when I was growing up too. And he
always will be.

As to your question, 'When comes such another ?' Sean. I offer the
following. Put Roy P. Benavides into Google for a search.

Another Medal Of Honor recipient from Texas. Often called 'the little Mexican', as he was the same size as Audie Murphy. 5'5" tall.

He was a Medic. Severely wounded multiple times at Loc Ninh, Viet Nam in 1967. Years to recover. A great role model.

A veteran friend that was a Medivac 'Dustoff' pilot checked his old log books after I sent him Benavides citation story, and emailed me back that he may have flown him out of Loc Ninh that day as he was first up to fly. My friend has a DFC amongst his other decorations, so he was in good company !!; May 5, 2015 at 12:58 PM
Informed42 said...: Sean. I misspelled his last name.
Try this link in Google-

Roy Benavidez - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; May 5, 2015 at 1:26 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy

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