By Den Ardinger 32° KCCH

Audie Murphy was bornin Kingston, Hunt County, Texas on June 20, 1925.  He was the son of sharecroppers Emmett Berry Murphy (1877-1976) and his wife Josie Bell Killian (1891-1941).  His father abandoned the large family of twelve children, and his mother died when he was a teenager. To help his family, he was forced to take on odd jobs at an early age and he left school in the fifth grade.  He was 16 when the attack on Pearl Harbor forced America into World War II so he had his older sister falsify his birth records by one year so that he could meet the minimum age requirement to enlist.

He was initially turned down by the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps for not only being too young but for being too small.  At 5’ 5” and only 110 pounds, he was immediately rejected.  Forcing himself to eat and exercise, he was eventually accepted by the Army.  He went through basic training and was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division.  He shipped out with his unit to Casablanca in French Morocco on February 20, 1943 at the age of 17.  He was promoted to Private First Class in May, to Corporal in July, and Sergeant in December.  In January 1944 he was promoted to Staff Sergeant.

The 3rd Division participated in intense combat from 1943 until the end of the war in 1945.  Murphy saw his first action during the invasion of Sicily in 1943.  In 1944 he took part in the invasion of Italy at Anzio and the liberation of Rome.  He then took part in the invasion of Southern France seeing hard combat at Montelimar and the L’Omet quarry. During his service, he was credited with killing 241 enemy soldiers.

Murphy received his first Bronze Star medal with “V” for Valor after destroying a German tank in March 1944 and the second Bronze Star when his unit liberated Rome in June.  In August 1944 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the fighting on Yellow Beach when his unit took part in the invasion of Southern France.

He received his first Purple Heart medal when he was wounded from a mortar shell blast in northeastern France in September 1944.  His first Silver Star medal came during fighting at the L’Omet quarry in October and his second Silver Star a few days later.  He was wounded for the second time in October and received an oak leaf cluster to his Purple Heart. He was wounded in both legs in January 1945 and received his second oak leaf cluster to his Purple Heart.  Awarded a battlefield promotion to Second Lieutenant at age 19, he was made the Commander of Company B while waiting for reinforcements.

During action in the Colomar Pocket in the Vosges Mountains he was awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military decoration.  The award came after he single handedly held off a German attack of fifty soldiers for more than an hour while firing the 50-caliber machine gun from the deck of a burning American M10 tank destroyer after once again being wounded.

In February 1945, Audie Murphy was promoted to First Lieutenant and awarded the Legion of Merit for service from January 1944 to February 1945.

In addition to these medals, he was also awarded many others including the French Legion of Honor – Grade of Chevalier, the French Croix de guerre with silver star, and the Belgian Croix de guerre with Palm.  Almost as an afterthought, at the close of the war in 1945, he was awarded a Good Conduct medal.

After the war, Murphy remained attached to the military and was promoted to Captain in the 36th Infantry Division of the Texas Army National Guard.  He was promoted to Major in 1956.  He transferred to the Army Reserve in 1969.

Being a civilian, Audie Murphy took up acting in 1948 and appeared in more than 40 feature films and one television series by 1969.  His first starring roll was in the 1949 film “Bad Boy”.  In 1949, he wrote a book on his military experiences in “To Hell and Back” which was later made into a movie in 1955 with Murphy playing himself.  It was the biggest hit for Universal Studios up to that time.

Murphy married actress Wanda Hendrix in 1949 but they divorced two years later.  He then married Pamela Opal Lee Archer, an airline stewardess, and they had two sons.

He became interested in Freemasonry in 1955 and was initiated an Entered Apprentice at North Hollywood Lodge 542 Free & Accepted Masons on February 14.  He was passed to Fellowcraft on April 4 and raised a Master Mason on June 27, 1955.  He became a dual member with Heritage Lodge 764 on May 14, 1956.  He joined the Scottish Rite in the Valley of Dallas in 1957 and was also a Shriner in Dallas, Texas, in 1957.  In Scottish Rite, he was made a Knight Commander of the Court of Honor on December 11, 1965, and later Coronated a 33° Inspector General Honorary.

On May 28, 1971, Audie Murphy was killed in a private plane crash at the age of 45 along with the pilot and four other passengers when the plane crashed into a mountain during poor weather conditions near Roanoke, Virginia.  He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery on June 7th.  His grave is the second most visited after President John F. Kennedy.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was awarded the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor by his home state.

Audie Murphy, more than a man, a 33° Scottish Rite Mason.