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No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy

"Once, the name Audie Murphy was synonymous with military heroism — and with good reason. In world War II, over the course of more than two years of continuous combat in Europe, this Texas sharecropper's son entered the ranks of the immortals who can claim a sustained series of hard-to-believe (but thoroughly documented) exploits on the bloody battlegrounds of Sicily, Anzio, France, and Germany. For his heroic achievements, which left some 240 German soldiers dead, Murphy received the most medals ever awarded to an American soldier, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. When the portrait of this freckled, baby-faced foot soldier appeared on the cover of Life magazine, Audie Murphy became the living symbol of America's desire for its sons to return, unravaged, from the war. After the war, Murphy went on to launch a long and surprisingly durable career as a screen actor, starring in such films as The Red Badge of Courage, The Quiet American, his autobiographical war movie To Hell and Back, and a long series of Westerns (where he was inevitably cast as 'the Kid'). But just beneath the surface of his life lay a numbness, a delayed stress relieved only by bouts of womanizing, nocturnal adventures, reckless gambling, and dangerous practical jokes. Murphy would survive into the Vietnam era as an anachronism of sorts, whose baroque schemes for financial salvation plunged him into the American political and criminal netherworld — a hero badly out of time. Don Graham tells the story of this emblematic American life in vivid detail, with a rich appreciation for the ironies and multiple meanings to be found there, and with awe at the combat heroics of this 'fugitive from the law of averages.' Audie Murphy's grave is the most visited one in Arlington national Cemetery, save JFK's, even today; No Name on the Bullet explains why this is so to a whole new generation of Americans

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 384
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780670815111
  • Genres
  • biography, history
  • Release date
  • 1989