May 13 - To Hell And Back

Today’s movie is a biographical combat film with a scene set on May 13. I hope you will enjoy this film and watch it tonight.

TO HELL AND BACK           

Twelve year old Audie Murphy helps support his family by shooting game and working odd jobs. After his mother dies several years later, he enlists in the armed forces and sends most of his pay to an older sister who is taking care of his younger siblings. He is rejected by the Maries, the Navy and the paratroopers for being undersized before being reluctantly accepted by the Army. He is sent in as a replacement in North Africa after the ‘Torch’ landings,  His unit does not see much combat and in fact are at a party when on May 13, 1943, they hear about the German surrender in Tunis. [22:17 to 24:50] His unit is a part of the invasion of Sicily, Operation ‘Husky’. When his lieutenant is killed, Murphy helps take out a machine gun nest. He is promoted to corporal. In Italy his lieutenant is killed and his sergeant wounded, so Murphy has to take over a unit that is acting as a diversion for a river crossing taking place elsewhere.  Afterwards, his unit gets to participate in some well deserved  rest and relaxation in Naples. After the Anzio landing, Murphy led his platoon in a small unit action over a strategically placed farmhouse need as an artillery spotter location. Murphy is later involved in the ‘Dragoon’ landings in southern France. Murphy received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant.  In an attack on the last German pocket in France, Murphy won a Congressional Medal of Honor/ The attack bogged down and the Germans counterattacked. Murphy climbed onto a burning tank destroyer and used its machine gun to cut down the advancing Germans, stopping their attack. 

                     

A somewhat sentimentalized story about a great World War II hero. Interesting in that Murphy played himself in the film. Watchable, but you can tell the combat scenes were filmed in the American west, not in Europe.

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2002) at page 529 gives the date of the surrender

Director - Jesse Hibbs                       

Producer - Aaron Rosenberg                             

Narrator - General Walter Bedell Smith 

Screenplay - Gil Doud and Audie Murphy      

Runtime – 1 hour 46 minutes   

Released -  September 2, 1955                                                                   

Starring –

Audie Murphy as Himself

Marshall Thompson as Pvt/Corp. Johnson

Charles Drake as Private Brandon

Jack Kelly as Pvt./Staff Sgt Kerrigan

Gregg Palmer as Lieutenant Manning

Paul Picerni as Pvt./Cpl Valentino

David Janssen as Lieutenant Lee

Richard Castle as Private Kovak

Bruce Cowling as Captain Marks

Paul Langton as Colonel Howe

Art Aragon as Sanchez

Felix Noriego as Swope

Denver Pyle as Thompson

Brett Halsey as Saunders

Susan Kohner as Maria

Anabel Shaw as Helen

Mary Field as Mrs. Murphy

Copyright by Ivan Walters 2014.