Inspiration for shorty

I'm kinda short. Not really short, but shortish. Also, my jaw makes this clicking noise sometimes when I chew. Anyway, enough about me, what about Audie Murphy? When a Texan named Audie tried to join the Marine Corps in 1942 he was only 16 years old. Audie (no relation to the car) was 5 feet 5 inches and weighed about 55 kilos soaking wet. Dude was seriously small. But rejection by the Marines didn't get him down, Audie simply moved on to the Army Air Corps and they rejected him as well, probably because they doubted his ability to see over the dashboard and/or reach the pedals in a fighter plane. Eventually Audie discovered that the Army were pretty keen to recruit anybody who could shield professional soldiers from enemy fire with their persons. But then the Army decided that such a slightly-built baby faced teen was probably not cut out for actual battle - why? because he passed out during a passing out parade. From my perspective that was an early sign that the little dude was willing to follow orders with an impressive combination of conviction and precision. But the Army didn't see it that way, and they tried to make him a cook. But Audie fought the system and his persistence finally gave him the opportunity every boy dreams of - to get out of the kitchen, travel overseas and kill stuff with machine guns and high-powered rifles.

Anyway, if sometimes you feel kinda down, like you're a loser or short or a loser, then be of good cheer loser. Audie, who, despite misplaced, commas and despite being named after a car and being really small, got the chance to kill stuff and make it dead.

And how.

Audie had no contact with the enemy while in Africa, but spent his time training for war anyway. He was probably being made fun of because of his size and probably because he made a clicking sound when he chewed and stuff.

Then when the 3rd division, 7th Army took part in the invasion of Italy, our boy went along, probably because he was in the 3rd division, 7th Army. He killed two Italian officers who happened to be on horseback, which was the style at the time. Audie was immediately promoted to corporal and became the proud owner of two Gucci saddlebags.

Then in Salerno, he killed a bunch of other enemy dudes, it was cold (and wet) and did I mention that he had contracted Malaria by this stage and was pretty sick most of the time? Again, he was promoted, this time to Sargeant. He had also started a fairly extensive collection of medals, but more on that later. I'm guessing that around this time, people were probably not calling him 'Baby Face' 'Shorty' or 'Click-Chew' anymore.

Then in Southern France, Audie and his best buddy were going up a hill to take some German prisoners. But it turns out they were faking their surrender and one of them shot and killed Audie's best buddy. Audie skipped the counselling and instead decided to kill every last living thing on that hill. He wiped out the MG-42 crew (usually 3 men - a gunner, a spotter and a loader). And then Audie grabbed the MG-42 (the Germans had no use for it anymore) and went all Rambo with it. Now, the fact that the MG-42 would have weighed as much as Audie didn't seem to matter much - he just ran up the hill and proceeded to kill another two MG-42 crews, plus a bunch of other German soldiers. Then afterwards he probably sat down and listened to some Fall Out Boy on his iPod Nano and had a good cry.

After that little episode, he was promoted to Staff (Platoon) Sergeant, did some other heroic stuff a couple of days later and was then promoted through a Battlefield Commission to Lieutenant and became Platoon leader.

By this stage nobody called him shorty anymore. Nobody.

But the dude did get wounded, he got shot by a sniper and was wounded by mortar fire, he spent some time in hospital, but got out and continued to be awesome. Now, by the time he was company commander, he didn't have the strength to carry around all his medals on account of him being small and having malaria and all. But, being awesome, he did manage to make more stuff dead.

On January 26 1940-something, Audie, in −10 °C was sent to defend the Colmar Pocket with his remaining 19 men (out of the original 128). But when things got a bit dicey, he sent his men to the rear while he stayed in a forward position and took to sniping the enemy with his carbine. When he ordered a couple of M-10 tanks to go in, they got totally hammered on account of there now being heaps of Germans advancing on their position with mortars and anti-tank weapon support. Remember the passing out parade? Audie always followed orders, and he had been ordered to hold the Colmar Pocket at all costs because it was strategically crucial.So Audie ran up to a burning M-10 (which was on fire), climbed on to the burning tank that was burning on fire, locked 'n' loaded the Browning .50 and spent an hour single-handedly mowing down Krauts. Now, here's my analysis: Audie was short, so from the German point of view they were being mowed down by a .50 cal which had become possessed, when in actual fact Audie was behind it and all you could see if you looked really carefully from the front was the top of his helmet. But that's the point! I mean, think about it, if you stopped in the middle of a battle and had a careful look, with the squinting and the hand shading the eyes and all that, you'd be killed, because after all, you're just standing there squinting in front of a heavy machine gun that looks like it is being operated by a ghost or something. So, that's the reason I think he was able to kill approximately 200 Germans that day.

Audie was awarded every medal the American military gave at the time and some of them more than once. He also got a medal from Belgium and 5 from France. So, next time you're feeling inadequate for being short, try mounting a burning tank and machine gunning everything in front of you.

Or just stack your heels - your choice.