war is on, too, and soldiering, he is persuaded, is a better opportunity than
farm labor to help his younger brothers and sisters.
Universal-International writers composed that scene from a reluctant
Murphy’s musings in , as the studio polished the film script. Baby-
faced Audie would be the new Sergeant York—another poor southern boy
handy with guns, intimate with landscape (as great hunters must always
be), and now the most decorated hero of another world war. Alvin York’s
added attraction to the adoring public, in and again in , when
Hollywood madeSergeant York, had been York’s deep evangelical Christian
belief. Murphy was problematic on this theme, freely admitting that he had
been virtually an atheist-in-a-foxhole: he was, he allowed, ‘‘close to never
having any religion at all.’’ So World War II’s most decorated hero would be
presented as Dust Bowl poster child; he had, after all, grown up even poorer
than York. He had adored his mother, too, and his abstinence from tobacco
and booze complemented the boyishness that in turn made his combat ex-
ploits the more astonishing.
The first scene, however dubious in detail, nonetheless surely represents
truths about an American childhood deprived of childhood: no bicycle,
no baseball, no carefree play, hardly five years of schooling, and relentless
labor in cotton fields. Murphy’s own war memoir (with the same title
as the movie) has no such scene, merely a riff on his family’s misfortune
blended with a funny conversation about soldiering with a World War I
veteran while chopping cotton. Elsewhere, though, another story of Mur-
phy from Depression-era Texas—and a better one—seems true. One day a
young man home from college spotted young Leon heading out with his
slingshot. He called to the boy, offering the loan of his single-shot . rifle,
along with eight rounds of ammunition. A few hours later, Leon returned
the rifle and four of the shells with thanks, then walked home with his four
dead rabbits.
When he was seventeen, Murphy sawSergeant Yorktwice. He tried des-
perately (early in ) to get into the Marines but was turned away. Who
would sign for an orphaned, underaged volunteer? More problematic was
his size: five feet, five and a half inches tall, pounds. As soon as he
turned eighteen, in June , though, the army took him, and after basic
training he insisted on a combat job with the infantry. He trained more
and shipped out with the Third Infantry Division for Casablanca early in
, barely missing the end of the North African war; but in Sicily he and
his comrades were bloodied soon enough. One day Audie was with a group