Audie Murphy became the poster child for timeless American virtues of innocence, humility, honesty, and steely courage, and yet he would be haunted by nightmares for the rest of his life. Starring beside actors like Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy would become an enormously popular Hollywood star, all the while suffering from a feeling of emotional numbness that led him to seek thrills and ultimately die tragically and penniless.
The story of Audie Murphy is really the story of the effect of war on the individual soldier and how he must handle “the single most pervasive, traumatic experience of war”: killing and seeing others killed. David A Smith tells a timeless story: one of heroism and tragedy. Audie Murphy’s life story is the “cautionary tale of a hero” that the American public has forgotten.
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