Audie

I remember when I was a boy, I watched a movie called, “To Hell and Back,” starring Audie Murphy. For those that don’t know who Audie Murphy is, he is the most decorated soldier in World War Two. I would often go to the cornfield that was a short walk from our house, enter the woods that were near it, and with my toy gun, I entered a war. 

I dug holes, made barricades for cover, and my eight year old legs ran fast, hopping downed trees, killing German soldiers and Nazis. I thought it was pretty cool that Audie and I had close to the same last name. It was Audie Murphy that made me start to read about history, in particular World War Two history, and why we went across an ocean to fight it. When I read about the genocide of the Jewish people and Adolf Hitler wanting to rule the world and make every single place on the world map Aryan Nations, even in my young mind I knew that it was wrong and Audie Murphy became more of a hero to me for making a stand.

 I became obsessed with looking at World War Two pictures and every time my mom took me to the Penny Branch library, I would get the librarian to find more books for me. One day, I checked out a book on the Holocaust and inside the pages were filled with bodies that looked like skeletons and people standing behind barbed wired fences with eyes of desperation. I remember how men were always standing with one another, and the woman and children were often nowhere to be seen. In my later years, I discovered through my reading that the women and children were often executed first while the men worked until their ailing bodies could no longer do so, and then they too were killed. The smoke stacks from Auschwitz stood high and filtered out a gray smoke that in my readings said it was human ash. 

As I aged, my fascination with history and philosophy stayed intact. To me, it gave me a glimpse into the past, along with the stories my mom would tell me about her uncles who served in World War Two. Understanding history helps us avoid the same mistakes, or stand up with strength when we see cruelty reenter our world. The books, pictures, and stories also gave me a glimpse into the future. It showed me that I once lived in a great nation that helped the world from falling to tyranny. With philosophy, I have been able to look at events with reason, understand my dichotomy of control, and also know when people are not living with virtue such as self-control, justice, courage, and wisdom. It helped me to understand that I cannot control what people do or how they act, but only my response to their actions. This seed, all of this, was planted in me from watching an Audie Murphy movie. That one movie launched me into a direction of self-development and self-awareness that I did not even understand at the time, and am still attempting to. 

There may come a time again one day when we have to fight tyranny. When the call to arms will come forth for the greater good of the world. I truly believe that people know when they are being cruel. How can they not? The problem is, they don’t care. They seek some sort of power, greed, and display their hate and ignorance, not unlike what Hitler once sought after. Not unlike what we witnessed when the two towers fell in New York City. I knew this in 1978 and know it now as I sit here on my patio typing these words, keeping my body strong, my biscuits warm, my philosophies intact, and understanding history so that we do not repeat the horrible atrocities of our past. I thank four people for that, Sergeant Tom who taught me the responsibility of what I held in my hands, my mom, the Penny Branch librarian, and Audie Murphy. 

I think I will go watch “To Hell and Back” soon and remember there was once a time when people rose together to stop the wickedness that was unfolding before them. 

This is just a story of a kid who liked history and philosophy, and of a man who attempts to practice what he still studies. Don’t dissect it too much. As a student once phrased, “That’s a you problem.”