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AUDIE MURPHY (1924 – 1971) Most Decorated Soldier in World War II & Actor

In Actors, adventure, American History, Hollywood, People, People from Texas, Trivia, World War II on October 4, 2010 at 3:21 PM

Audie Murphy

When Audie Murphy was twelve, the dream of fighting in the Army was his only relief from the poverty and back-breaking work of his Texas sharecropper family. He was one of nine children who all worked in the fields as soon as they were old enough to hold a hoe. While he was tending the crops, Murphy fought many battles, and he was always victorious and unharmed. Real life did not play itself out so easily.

When Murphy was a young boy, his father left with no explanation and never returned. His mother died when he was sixteen. The three youngest children were placed in an orphanage, and the rest were forced to fend for themselves. Murphy worked in a gas station and radio repair shop, but he had a bad temper and got into fights often. He preferred to be alone, and only in solitude could he connect with his dreams.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Murphy was 17 years old and more determined than ever to become a soldier. The day he turned 18 he went to the Marine Corps recruiting station to offer his services. He was rejected outright for being too skinny, which only added to his anger. His second choice was the newly formed paratroopers. They were a little more encouraging, telling him to come back after putting on weight. His third option was the infantry, even though he thought they were too ordinary for his ambitions. They accepted him as he was and shipped him off to boot camp. During the first close-order drill, Murphy passed out and was immediately dubbed “Baby.” To add insult to injury, he was transferred to cook and baker’s school.

Refusal to do anything else eventually got Murphy a place back in the rank and file. In 1943 he landed in Tunis, Tunisia and then went on to Italy. Finally, his dream of being in combat was coming true.

In Sicily, Murphy was moving ahead of his company with the scouts. Two Italians appeared, and instead of surrendering, they jumped on horses to escape. Murphy instinctively fired two shots and killed the two enemy soldiers. Murphy’s company commander made him a corporal. During a march to Palermo, covering 25 miles per day, he contracted malaria and was in the field hospital for a week.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER After many more battles, some additional training and two more bouts of malaria, Murphy landed in France. His company was ordered to neutralize a hill that was an enemy strongpoint. Murphy and two comrades were bringing up the rear with enemy fire surrounding them. One of his partners died mid-sentence right next to Murphy, and the other one was killed when standing up to move. Murphy dove into a ditch and came face to face with two German soldiers. The split second it took for them to realize who they were looking at was enough of an advantage for Murphy to react, killing both of them.

While he was making his retreat, Murphy exchanged fire with several Germans in various foxholes until his ammunition ran out. He found some fellow soldiers pinned to the ground by German fire overhead. Murphy dragged a discarded machine gun into a ditch and aimed uphill so the enemy had to expose themselves to shoot down to him. By the time he was ready to shoot, however, bullets were landing within a foot of his body. He let loose with fire in all directions trying to hit anything he could. There were cries of agony, and Murphy walked uphill to reconnoiter the area. He saw several dead Germans and one that he put out of his misery.

When more gunfire attacked him, he emptied his weapon and waited. One of his buddies, Brandon, arrived, and as both men started walking in the ditch, they were attacked at point blank range. A bullet clipped off part of Brandon’s ear, but he was able to kill both attackers. The two American soldiers dove into a hole already occupied by two Germans, and killed them. Then Murphy and Brandon raised their helmets, inviting fire to reveal the enemy’s position. They lobbed two hand grenades toward the sound of the blast, and then there was silence. Brandon saw a white handkerchief waving and was convinced the Germans were giving up. Murphy cautioned him against responding to the gesture, but Brandon stood up to capture the surrendering enemy. In a barrage of bullets, Brandon fell back into the hole. Murphy was trapped with two German soldiers under him and his best buddy on top. With single-minded focus, he tried to move his friend, leading the way with a grenade. He sneaked behind the remaining Germans and made sure they were permanently incapacitated. Finally, there were no more enemy soldiers to confront. After removing the personal effects from Brandon’s pockets, Murphy sat next to his friend and cried until he was spent before rejoining his company.

For his courage and commitment in many similar situations during three years of active combat, Murphy received 33 awards and decorations. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military award given for bravery. In an attack of six Panzer tanks and 250 infantrymen, Murphy mounted an abandoned, burning tank destroyer and used one machine gun to stave off the advancing enemy. Even though he was wounded in the leg, Murphy stayed there for almost an hour, fighting off the attacking Germans on three sides and single-handedly killing 50 of them. After rejoining his company, he organized a counterattack which forced the Germans to retreat. In addition, he received five decorations from France and Belgium. He is credited with killing, wounding or capturing over 250 enemy soldiers. In 1945 Murphy was 21 years old when he resigned from active duty. He had attained the rank of Second Lieutenant.

LIFE AFTER WAR James Cagney saw Murphy’s photo on the cover of Life magazine and invited him to go to Hollywood. Murphy admitted he had little talent, and he struggled to get parts, sleeping in a gymnasium until he got a break and finally a contract at Universal. He found his niche in westerns and starred in The Red Badge of Courage directed by John Houston.

In 1949 he published his autobiography, To Hell and Back, which proved to be a bestseller, and he starred in the film version of his story. The movie set a box office record for Universal that was only surpassed by Jaws in 1975. He made a total of 44 films.

Murphy’s heart was always in Texas, and he owned a ranch there as well as in California and Arizona. He owned and bred Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses, winning and losing fortunes gambling on them, and playing poker. He also discovered a talent for songwriting, and he wrote songs recorded by Dean Martin, Eddy Arnold and Roy Clark.

In 1949 he married actress Wanda Hendrix, but the marriage only lasted a year. In 1951 he married Pamela Archer, and they had two sons.

LIVING WITH THE NIGHTMARES Murphy’s combat experiences haunted him for the rest of his life. He suffered from “battle fatigue,” now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow. In order to cope with insomnia and depression he became addicted to sleeping pills. To break the addiction, Murphy locked himself in a motel room for a week until he finished going through withdrawal. He advocated on behalf of the soldiers returning from Korea and Vietnam for better health benefits and treatment for mental health issues.

On May 28, 1971, Murphy, 46 years old, was a passenger in a private plane when it crashed into a fog covered mountain near Roanoke, Virginia. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

QUESTION: How do you feel about war? What ideals do you think are important enough to die for?

To see clips of Murphy in To Hell and Back go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFOMVKB9fiY&feature=related

To see his appearance on the game show “What’s My Line” go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RWQ5tESVzk

Sources:

Murphy, Audie, To Hell and Back. New York: Holt Rinehart, and Winston, 1949.

http://www.audiemurphy.com/biograph.htm

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001559/bio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy

http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/2907/murphy-audie-l.php

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/historical_information/audie_murphy.html

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SOPHIE BLANCHARD (1778 –1819) First Women to Fly Solo in a Hot Air Balloon

In adventure, Ballooning, Biography, Feminists, French History, People, Pilots, Uncategorized, women on September 15, 2010 at 9:34 AM

Sophie Blanchard

In the 1960s, The 5th Dimension sang, “Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?” When Sophie Blanchard’s husband said that to her, she said, “Yes,” and they were Up, Up and Away. Sophie felt most comfortable in the air, but what goes up must come down.

Marie Madeleine-Sophie Armant came to the world’s attention when she married Jean-Pierre Blanchard, an inventor and pioneer in French aviation, specifically ballooning. Other than the fact that she was born to Protestant parents in western France, almost nothing is known about her young life.

Blanchard was about 16 years old when she married, 35 years younger than her husband, becoming his second wife. She was described as a small, nervous woman who startled easily when she heard loud noises. When she started flying with Jean-Pierre, she felt more at home in the quiet, peaceful sky than on terra firma.

TAKING TO THE SKIES Blanchard made her first balloon ascent in 1804 with her husband as a stunt to raise money. Even though Jean-Pierre was the world’s first professional balloonist and had made demonstration tours all over Europe, he wasn’t a very good businessman. They hoped that having a woman in the basket would attract more fans. Blanchard wasn’t the first woman to ride in a balloon. Three other women had gone up in tethered balloons, and two women had previously gone up untethered, but seeing a woman aloft was still a novelty.

In 1809, Jean-Pierre was flying over The Hague when he had a heart attack and fell from his balloon. He died from his injuries. He had adopted the Latin phrase Sic itur ad astra (“Such is the path to the stars”) as his personal motto. Blanchard decided to follow her husband’s path and became the first woman to fly solo in a balloon.

Blanchard still needed to pay off the debt left by her husband, so her balloon of choice was a hydrogen-filled gas balloon. The benefits of using gas (instead of hot air) generally outweighed the risks. She wouldn’t have to tend to a fire to keep the balloon airborne and, since she was a petite woman, she could use a small basket about the size of a chair and minimal gas to inflate the balloon.

WORTH THE RISK Even though ballooning had been popular for almost 30 years, the inherent dangers still made it a risky endeavor. Blanchard passed out during several flights because of the high altitude, and she encountered freezing temperatures when she cruised at 12,000 feet. In 1811, she had to stay airborne for over 14 hours to avoid a hail storm. And sometimes landing was just as risky. One time her balloon made a crash landing in a marsh, and she almost drowned.

Blanchard’s husband had experimented with parachutes, dropping dogs out of the basket to demonstrate floating down to earth safely. One time when flying solo his balloon ruptured, and he was grateful for the parachute as his only way to escape. None of Jean-Pierre’s mishaps deterred Blanchard from her own desire to be a pilot. When she had the opportunity to fly solo, Blanchard also tested the flotation devices using dogs, but she never had the occasion to need one herself. When she flew exhibitions at events, she spiced things up by attaching small baskets of fireworks to parachutes to light up the sky as they were falling.

Engraving of Sophie Blanchard in 1811

GETTING OFFICIAL RECOGNITION Napoleon was a big fan of Madame Blanchard, and he appointed her as the “Aeronaut of the Official Festivals,” making her responsible for organizing balloon demonstrations at official events. In 1810, she flew over the Champs de Mars (today near the Eiffel Tower) in honor of Napoleon’s marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. To commemorate the birth of their son, Blanchard flew over Paris dropping announcements of the birth. One year later, Blanchard made an ascent over the palace Château de Saint-Cloud during the official celebration of the boy’s baptism, and she set off fireworks from her balloon. There’s speculation that she also devised plans with Napoleon to use hot air balloons for an aerial invasion of England, which were never carried out.

Blanchard’s popularity outlasted Napoleon’s rule. When Louis XVIII returned to Paris in 1814 to regain the throne, she participated in the official procession, making her ascent from Pont Neuf. King Louis was so impressed by her performance that he named her the “Official Aeronaut of the Restoration.”

Blanchard was also known throughout Europe, and large crowds came to watch her. For the opening night of the opera in Frankfurt in 1810, she was allegedly responsible for a poor audience, as most of the city turned out to see her rather than attend the opera’s debut.

AN UNPLANNED DESCENT In 1819, when Blanchard was 42 years old, she made an ascent over the Tivoli Gardens (now the site of the Saint-Lazare station), an area she was very familiar with. She was warned repeatedly about the dangers of using pyrotechnics in her exhibitions. She had never had an incident, but on the night of July 6, she was uncharacteristically nervous. She went ahead with the demonstration, wearing a white dress and white hat topped with ostrich feathers and waving a white flag. There was a strong wind and the balloon had difficulty rising. It bounced off a tree in the attempt. Blanchard threw ballast overboard, reducing the weight but also jeopardizing her stability.

When she had cleared the trees, Blanchard began her show using “Bengal Fire” fireworks to illuminate the balloon. While she was still rising, the hydrogen caught on fire and the balloon started to fall. The wind carried her off course, and Blanchard continued to eliminate ballast to become lighter and keep from plunging to the ground.

The balloon drifted above the rooftops of the Rue de Provence where the hydrogen gas finally burned up, causing the balloon to drop onto the roof of a house. Blanchard was tossed out of her small basket, fell to the street below and was killed. Speculation after the fact determined that the pyrotechnics were knocked out of position by the tree the balloon hit on the way up.

The crowd was stunned, and the rest of the event was cancelled. The owners of Tivoli Gardens donated the admission fees to the support of Blanchard’s children. When they found out that she didn’t have any children, the money was used to build a memorial to her over her grave, which was engraved with epitaph “victime de son art et de son intrépidité” (“victim of her art and intrepidity”).

QUESTION: How do you feel about flying? Would you like to be a pilot? Why or why not?

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Blanchard

http://www.mindensoaringclub.com/int2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=115&Itemid=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Blanchard

http://www.eballoon.org/history/history-of-ballooning.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVIII_of_France

http://www.latin-dictionary.org/Sic_itur_ad_astra

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2059

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HAROLD BRIDE (1890 – 1956) Wireless Operator on the Titanic

In adventure, American History, Biography, History, People, People from England, Telegraph Operators, Titanic, Trivia on July 19, 2010 at 9:38 PM

Harold Bride at age 16

Harold Bride was one of those kids who knew what he wanted to be when he grew up: a wireless operator. The youngest of five children, he was shy and soft spoken with an easy sense of humor. The telegraph was the hottest wireless technology at the time, and Bride was a techno geek in the making.

It was expensive to go to telegraphy school, so he worked in the family business until age 20 to earn the money for tuition. In 1910 he started classes, and, to the neighbors’ disgust, built an antenna in the yard so he could practice using Morse code. He finished his training after one year and immediately started a job in London.

In March 1912, Bride received a telegram saying his next posting would be on the Titanic and was sent to Belfast, Ireland for special training. Bride and his boss, Jack Phillips, were placed onboard the ship through the Marconi International Marine Telegraph Company and given junior officer status. The salary was adequate but the adventure quotient was very high.

Two weeks before reporting for the sea trials, Bride and Mabel Ludlow became engaged. He had doubts that she was the one, but she nagged him until he acquiesced, giving her something to brag about while he was at sea.

ADVENTURE AT SEA On April 10, 1912 the Titanic set sail. The wireless broke down on April 13, and it took Bride and Phillips seven hours to diagnose and fix the problem. Ice warnings had been received on April 11 and 12 and delivered to Captain Smith on the bridge. The equipment was repaired in time to receive four additional warnings on the 13^th, and Bride delivered the first one to the Captain. Captain’s orders specified that the passenger’s personal messages were the priority, and the three later warnings were ignored.

About 7:30 on the night of April 14, Phillips was manning the telegraph and Bride went to bed. At 11:40 the Titanic struck an iceberg. Bride slept through the collision but woke up at 11:55, entering the work room in his pajamas to check up on his boss. As Bride was preparing to relieve Phillips, the Captain entered, informed the men of the crash and told them to prepare a call for assistance to send on his orders as soon as an inspection was finished.

Ten minutes later the Captain returned and ordered the international call for help be sent. Phillips tapped out CQD (Come-Quick-Distress), the call used prior to S-O-S. The gravity of what happened had not impacted the men yet, and Bride saw some humor in the situation. He suggested Phillips send S-O-S since it was a new call and this might be his only chance to use it. Phillips laughed and changed his message. After the Captain left, the men continued to joke around while they waited for a response.

They got replies from several ships, but the Carpathia was in the closest proximity to the now-sinking vessel. Forgetting he was still in his pajamas, Bride ran to tell the Captain that help was on the way. He saw passengers swarming on the decks trying to figure out what to do. When he returned, Phillips reminded him to get some clothes on. He did, and he brought an overcoat to keep Phillips warm.

The situation got worse fast. Phillips announced that the wireless signal was getting weaker, and finally the Captain came to say that the engine rooms were taking on water. Bride went to his bunk and found his life jacket and put on boots and another coat. While Phillips continued to send messages, Bride secured a lifebelt around him. Phillips dispatched Bride to the deck for a status update of what was happening. Bride helped twelve men lift the last collapsible down to be used to escape.

The Captain walked in while Bride was updating his boss. Captain Smith praised the men for their work and excused them. It had reached the point of every man for himself. Phillips kept sending messages for another ten minutes while Bride collected their personal items. As if things weren’t bad enough, an employee who worked below decks entered the communications room and tried to steal Phillip’s life belt right off him. Bride attacked the man and made sure he was no longer a threat.

SURVIVAL MODE The wireless operators knew it was finally time to go. While the band played “Autumn,” Phillips headed aft, and Bride went on deck and saw people struggling to get the collapsible into the water. He helped push and ended up in the frigid water under the capsized raft. After vigorously swimming 150 feet to get away from the suction of the Titanic, someone pulled Bride up onto the bottom of a raft.

The small surface area of the collapsible was so crowded with survivors that they overlapped on top of each other. Someone suggested that they should pray, and they recited The Lord’s Prayer together. Bride’s feet were painfully injured, but there was nothing he could do. One man died on the raft.

When the Carpathia arrived about 4:00 am, one by one they vacated the life boat and ascended the ladder to the ship. It was then that Bride discovered the dead man was Phillips.

Bride had just enough strength to climb onboard, but he couldn’t walk. One foot was crushed and the other was frostbitten. He was taken immediately to the hospital ward, but a few hours later he was pressed into service again and wheeled into the wireless room of the Carpathia to transmit the names of survivors and personal messages. He ignored all incoming media requests for information and even a communiqué from the president in favor of transmitting the passengers’ notices. He was so caught up in his work that he didn’t realize when they arrived in New York until Guglielmo Marconi came aboard and released him from his duties.

LIFE AFTER NEAR DEATH Bride was still wheelchair bound when he testified in an American inquiry into what happened on that fateful night. He was accused of withholding information on the Carpathia for personal gain, and he had to squelch a rumor that he was taking baseball scores. Bride insisted that he was following the captain’s orders in only dispatching the relevant messages.

Returning to England was not the relief that it could have been. Bride had to relive his Titanic nightmare for a British inquiry and deal with his fiancé. He stalled any wedding plans until after the investigation. On September 25, 1912 he met Lucy Downie which gave him the courage to call off the wedding to Ludlow.

Downie worked in London as a teacher. This time it was love at first sight for Bride, and he took a job as a telegraphist in the city so they could be together. They married in April 1920 and had a daughter one year later.

During World War I Bride served on another ship, and then in 1922 the Brides moved to Scotland in search of a completely different life. They had two children, and Bride worked as a salesman. He was a confirmed geek, though, and operated his own radio as a hobby until he died in 1956.

QUESTION: What is your biggest fear? How do you help yourself when you feel afraid?

Sources:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9E07E0DF153CE633A2575AC1A9629C946396D6CF

http://www.titanic-lore.info/Wireless-shack.htm

http://www.titanic-lore.info/wireless-harold-bride.htm

http://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq/AmInq10Bride01.php

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/CQD

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