Very true. My great-uncle was lost at sea when his ship was sunk by a torpedo. My paternal grandfather, who was the younger brother and lost his leg as a child, was thrust into the position of being groomed to head the business. Understandably, my great-grand parents and my grandfather were never the same after Gordon's death.

My maternal grandfather was a pilot, but didn't like to talk about the war. Which is a shame, I would have liked to heard more about his experiences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBt1W8wm4AM

Real life survival ,most GIs suffered many thoughts of guys who didnt make it much like these.

My father was there with the Engineers. He retired from the Army when my mother was pregnant with me and moved back to the ranch. Never, not once did he speak of the war.

My dad served from 1940 to 1962. He talked and wrote about his experiences. Audie Murphy acted in a movie about himself, can't talk more about yourself than that! I doubt anybody would say he was anything but and incredibly brave, patriotic, dedicated and extremely luck mofo.

Some people talk about their experiences, some don't. In and of itself, it doesn't mean a damned thing.

Who said it does?

The closest my grandfather ever got was when he talked about the telegram he got while overseas.

"Betty is resting. Walter and Martha are doing well."

It took him awhile to realize my grandmother had twins.

I had a neighbor when I was a kid that said he was there. He said they walked on to the beach and had to go looking for trouble. He also said he had been switched to another unit or something at the last minute and the original group he was in did not fare so well. The switch had something to do with his drinking and fighting with others, something he did until the day he died.

I always thought he was just making stuff up until I found that there was one small group that hit the beach and there was no one there to 'greet' them.

One weird thing was that anyone I ever met that had a part in it did not like to talk about it but this guy did. I guess if I had taken part and all I did was get out of a boat and wander around on the beach I would tell people about it myself.

My grandfather volunteered for service in the Navy in WWII. He was rejected due to his poor eyesight. He instead spent the war working as a civilian electrician mostly working on subs at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. I remember him telling me about the stench aboard the British subs. After the war he spent the rest of his working life in warehousing, deciding which trucks would unload and at which dock. He died in 1993.

My other grandfather was a little older, beyond draft age, but volunteered on the condition that he be commissioned a Captain. The Army offered 2nd LT, and he declined, instead making Sealtest ice cream for the duration of the war and for many years after. He died around 1982.

My great Uncle John (last of the tall Shaffers at least until my half brother arrived many years later) was a Merchant Marine on a tanker that got torpedoed 50 miles out from New Orleans. He was burned badly when he abandoned ship, and ended up not making it.

My Uncle Bud was in Motor T during the war and family history has it that he drove the last truck out of Bastogne before it was surrounded by the Germans. He liked to drink, and to joke, and keeled over in the middle of telling one on his back porch around 1979.

My father was a little too young for WWII (but remembers Pearl Harbor), and joined the Army shortly before the onset of the Korean War. He wasn't sent to that, and wasn't sent to Vietnam either. He was still in when Gulf War I started and concluded his service stateside. He's still sucking wind at 80.

My dad graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in June 1941. He & my mother married the same day in the Academy Chapel. He wes sent to Greenland aboard the Cutter North Star until March 42. He was up there when the war started. He never talked about this tour or his second tour up there from July 42 to June 43 as CO of a Subchaser. Many years after his death, I stumbled across a clip on You tube about the Cost Guard and nearly fell off my seat when I saw him in the video. Just a momentary "cameo", but I swear it's my father at 6:26 turning to face the camera.:cool:
Coast Guard On Foreign Shores - Part 1 - YouTube

My dad wanted to be an AAF pilot before Pearl Harbor, joined up as soon as that happened and went to flight school. He didn't make the cut as a pilot, but became a B-17 bombardier in the early days in a B-17F. He did 52 missions in North Africa, and Sicily, got the DFC and was able to bag an ME-109 through the wimpy side gun he had in the early plane. Probably not a lot of fun up there before we had good fighter escorts ( just P-38s ) He didn't talk too much about it- I should have asked more questions....

That's the thing, asking the right questions at the right time.

Yeah, some folks deal with it by talking about it and others deal with it by avoiding even thinking about it.

Audie Murphy grew up about 40 miles from where I sit right now, so this is definitely Audie Murphy country.

Audie was not without demons after the war. His wives said that his nightmares were violent and an every night thing.

Ben Johnson was a buddy of his in Hollywood. Audie's downfall later in life was gambling. Ben Johnson told about a day at the race track with Audie. He said that Audie would study the racing forms intently and didn't want to be bothered while doing it.

While studying his racing forms some young ladies walked by and oohed and ahhed over him and how cute he was. He paid them no attention and they went on. In a few minutes a big, tough looking guy came back and started yelling at Audie saying that he had flirted with his wife.

Audie calmly pulled a pistol out of his belt, cocked it and pointed it at the tough guy. He said something like: "I've already killed 280 of you Son of a 8itches, so one more won't make any difference." Ben said the tough guy instantly turned white and slinked away. Audie calmly went back to his racing form. He ALWAYS carried a side arm with him after the war.

He ended up dying in a plane "accident" while owing a serious, six figure gambling debt to the mob. There was lots of speculation that it was a mob hit.

Audie was an intently dedicated soldier and did more than his share as a member of the Greatest Generation. His life afterwards was not without his paying for his time with a front row seat watching and participating in the atrocities of war.

Thanks for the 'rest of the story.' I knew he had PTSD but not the particulars.

"A fugitive from the law of averages";):):)

a bit of history.
http://www.audiemurphy.com/documents/doc019/TheSaturdayEveningPost-September151945.pdf


Who was that other lucky mofo who acted in a war movie about himself, produced by himself and contemporaneously filmed on his own Super 8?

Thanks for posting this Dynalow!

I think one of the best books about Audie is "No Name on the Bullet." It was thoroughly researched and written long after his death, the mid eighties I think. The story in your link was covered well in the book as well as many details of his life, before, during and after the military all the way to his death in 1970 or so.

BTW, it's kind of interesting that we are talking about Audie Murphey in a D-Day thread. He saw more fighting than most of the soldiers that hit the ground on D-Day, but he was not in Northern France on D-Day.

As tribute to soldiers who DID see the beaches on D-Day, many of them even non coms and officers had never been in combat. This is not in any way taking anything away from them. They fought hard through some really tough circumstances including the Battle of the Bulge for many of them. As opposed to the tough soldiers that fought their way through France and on into Germany, seeing about a year of combat, while Audie saw about three years.

I've always had a bit of curiosity in the back of my mind. The soldiers that were sent onto the beaches with no combat experience, I wonder if this was by design or necessity. I think it was by necessity, but I always wondered if maybe it was by design. Would a soldier that had never seen combat be more willing to charge the beach than those who had already suffered through the horrors of blood and guts? Just a thought of curiosity.