Transcript
Speaker: You know what's funny? ah I always try and like force my left eye open, but you know it's my right eye that does like the sleep drool. The stroke phase. But the other night, my left one was for sure doing it. And I was like, think both my eyes are closing. And then i realized I was just falling asleep.
Speaker: My lord. oh
Speaker: Jeffery. Hello. Welcome to the Jeff and Sam show. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. Hi, Sam. Hi, Jeff. This is your your true crime comedy History podcast. We like to start with a bang like we just did Actually, i hit record, then you started telling that story, and I thought we were going to like start the show, so we can cut that out. It's fine. Listen. It doesn't matter. Unashamed. Yeah, we are who we are. We are who we are. Fuck it.
Speaker: Okay. Stop. Hold on. So I just recorded a whole episode of this one story that i really liked the story, but after I finished it, I realized that in putting the story together, i did a shit job.
Speaker: um So we're not going to put out that story. I'm going to save it for later. So after this intro, Alan is going to mix and match, and we're going to give you guys A couple of stories that we really like that we've already done. You may have already heard them. Maybe you haven't. Don't know.
Speaker: But you're not going to be hearing in the one I just did because i didn't like it. And that's it. Thank you, Ella.
Speaker: One good thing about this show, Sam, one thing I love about this, doing this with you is things that kind of pique my curiosity or pique my interest. I get to like. Learn, yeah. Do it. Yes, I think that's one my favorite things. And tell the story.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you the story of Audie Murphy, who is the most decorated American soldier in the history of America. Let's do And we're going to find out why. I'm going to cry, aren't I?
Speaker: I don't know. i don't think so. um But he's also just, side note, doing the research for this. We all know the story of Steve Rogers, also known as... Captain America! A weak, frail boy who became a super soldier. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: ah There's a little bit of truth to that in the story of Audie Murphy. Wow. So Audie Murphy was born June 20th, 1925 in Kingston, Texas, and he was the seventh of 12 children.
Speaker: damn. And like his siblings, forced to move repeatedly as his parents sought to work wherever they could find it. As difficult as life was, things got even harder when the Great Depression hit in 1929.
Speaker: His father took jobs on various farms while his mother worked wherever she could to help the family make ends meet. To help support the family, Murphy dropped out of school in the fifth grade, taking on various odd jobs such as picking cotton and delivering newspapers for a dollar a day.
Speaker: This was the time of the Great Depression, and during the Depression, one in four workers lost their jobs, and over 25% of the nation's workforce was unemployed. Families across America lost their savings in everything they owned through no fault of their own. Sounds familiar.
Speaker: Amen. For the Murphys, who had nothing even before the Depression, this meant that any... ah that any of the 12 children over the age of six would have to get some sort of work to help feed themselves and the families. Six years old. Yeah.
Speaker: It was in this hard reality that Audie Murphy grew up, where his father abandoned the entire family and he was forced to provide for everyone at the age of 16, where his mother eventually died.
Speaker: And he watched his younger siblings get sent to orphanages. The contrast and absolutes of right and wrong were forged for Murphy during this time in his life and served him through many of his decisions and actions, both good and bad.
Speaker: It was through this lens that he read about the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, so he decided to enlist in the armed forces at the age of 17. Murphy tried to enlist in both the Marine Corps and the Army Airborne, but at 5'5", 5'5", and underweight, and underage, he was rejected by both.
Speaker: He was later advised to spend a few months gaining weight before applying again, which he did by eating bananas and drinking milk. After working with his sister to falsify his age, he reapplied and was recruited by the United States Army on June 30, 1942.
Speaker: He went through 13 weeks of basic training before being sent to advanced infantry training in the late fall, where he thrived in the army life and grew desperate to prove himself in combat.
Speaker: He was eventually assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, and his first taste of combat was in North Africa. It wasn't until July of 1943, during the invasion of Sicily, that Murphy got his first full taste of war.
Speaker: After his regiment landed on the southern edge of the island, they began their long march toward the strategic port of Messina, which was the first step to retake the whole of Italy.
Speaker: It was there that Murphy lost many of his romantic views of war. Surrounded by pack mules, inundated with hunger, thirst, endless marches, and other exhaustion, Murphy's discipline and experience with previous hardship helped him excel in this environment.
Speaker: Furthermore, these experiment experiences only solidified his matter-of-fact views regarding the war and the army's role in it. One such incident incident that showed this was when he spotted two Italian officers escaping cross across a field.
Speaker: Without hesitation, Murphy calmly shot both of them. When asked why he did this, his simple reply was, that was our job. After recovering from malaria and insisting that he rejoin his previous unit, Murphy would see combat again after his company was pinned down in a rock quarry by German gunfire.
Speaker: Murphy organized those with him and returned fire, eventually advancing on the Germans, killing several as others fled. After Messina was taken by Allied forces, Murphy's unit continued the terrible hike up the Italian boot, experiencing hard conditions and engaging in fierce combat.
Speaker: Murphy said, quote, i begin feelinging like a fugitive from the law of averages Murphy said that once being pinned down on at once being pinned down on a beach after the disastrous landing, he said,
Speaker: experience helps but you seldom learn that a situation is as bad as the imagination paints it to be is this where murphy's law came from Maybe. Everything bad that can happen does. Oh, maybe. That's interesting thought. I don't know.
Speaker: Through his many engagements, Murphy proved to have a natural tactical intelligence. Coupled with his self-discipline, this enabled him to steal his nerves in the face of true horror and work with his unit to accomplish assigned objective objectives.
Speaker: As their campaign in Italy continued, the number of acquaintances around him progressively dwindled until eventually he became the last of his 235-unit to survive the invasion.
Speaker: After the taking of Rome on June 5th, 1944, Audie went on a short leave, staying in the city as an army as the army continued to advance north. Alone in the city, his friends were mostly now dead. He observed other solitary American soldiers and remarked, quote, "'We prowl through Rome like ghosts.'" finding no satisfaction in anything we see or do.
Speaker: i feel like a man rep brief briefly reprieved from death and there is no joy within me. We can have no hope until the war is ended. Thinking of the men on the fighting fronts, I grow lonely on the streets of Rome.
Speaker: Murphy landed with his company in Southern France on August 15th, 1944, and was almost immediately pinned down by German gunfire. Reinforcing the line, his unit provided cover fire while Murphy borrowed caliber machine gun from a heavy weapons platoon.
Speaker: With his best friend, Private Tipton, he increased the rate of fire on the German position and killed two of the enemy in the process. Once they exhausted their ammunition, they charged the German position with their carbines and grenades, overtaking it as their unit moved slowly up behind them.
Speaker: As they continued advancing on additional enemy positions, one of the German soldiers raised a white flag of surrender. Both Murphy and Tipton lowered their weapons and Tipton advanced on the German to accept his surrender.
Speaker: But before he could do so, the German killed Private Tipton. seeing his lifeless body Seeing the lifeless body of his best friend fall to the ground, Murphy became enraged.
Speaker: Grabbing an abandoned German machine gun, he charged, firing the gun from the hip with one hand while throwing grenades with the other. and In all, he destroyed several fortified German positions, killing five, wounding two, and capturing more.
Speaker: For this feat of bravery, Murphy was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. When asked how he felt after being presented the award, he said, i won that award, all Tipton got was death. That's what he was thinking about his friend, Private Tipton.
Speaker: As the war continued, Murphy's unit advanced quickly, and as before, Murphy watched the friends continue to die around him. So many men have come and gone, and all I can do, so many men have come and gone that I can no longer keep track of them, he once lamented. Quote, I have isolated myself as much as possible, desiring only to do my work and be left alone.
Speaker: i feel burnt out emotionally and physically exhausted, Let the hill be strewn with corpses, so long as I do not have to turn over the bodies and find familiar faces of my friends.
Speaker: During the month of October 1944, now Sergeant Murphy accidentally led his man into two his men into two ambushes. The first of the two pinned his unit down until he was single-handedly able to flank the German patrol and wipe them out.
Speaker: On the second occasion, he crawled forward under extreme enemy fire to call... in accurate artillery onto the enemy positions. For these events, his heroism in both, he was awarded the prestigious Silver Star with Oakleaf Cluster.
Speaker: As the fighting continued, so did Sergeant Murphy. And as the engagements mounted and his leadership became more and more evident to his superiors, as they had done many times before, offered him a battlefield commission to make him an officer.
Speaker: Murphy again initially refused, citing his lack of schooling as being an obstacle to him being able to complete paperwork and other administrative duties. In addition, officers were regularly rotated out of companies and Murphy wanted to remain with his company.
Speaker: It was only after the army adjusted his administrative duties and ordered that he stay with his company did Murphy agree to the commission to become an officer. Now, Second Lieutenant Murphy found himself in command of 120 men.
Speaker: Despite his best attempts, he began to yeah sorry now second lieutenant murphy he found himself in command of one hundred and twenty men and despite his best attempts began to connect with them whenever possible.
Speaker: by that By this time, Murphy was already one of the most decorated soldiers in the U.S. Army. He had served and survived countless engagements across several theaters of war, seen friends die around him, and proven many feats of uncommon valor.
Speaker: But the challenge of his life was still to come. my god This is crazy. How did you not think I was going to cry by this? This is insane. Okay. this This is insane.
Speaker: During the month of January 1945, the Infantry Division had been ordered to clear a large wooded area near the city of Colmar. It was in the dead of winter with the snow and the wind being so violent that his men were unable to dig foxholes into the frozen ground.
Speaker: Murphy said, quote, This night seemed unusually long and the snow colder than I ever dreamed it could be. The sound of picks on frozen grounds beat against my eardrums like mad.
Speaker: When his superior officer was wounded not long after their advance, Murphy took command. At this point, every officer and enlisted man in his company was either dead or wounded, reducing the company's strength from 120 to able riflemen. the line.
Speaker: nevertheless murphy's orders were to hold the line They dug into the frozen ground after several hours and were later reinforced by a pair of m ten tank destroyers.
Speaker: Additional reinforcements that were set to arrive did not, and the 18 men with two armored vehicles found themselves holding the line against an unknown nor number of enemy infantry and armor.
Speaker: On the morning of January 26th, Murphy and his men saw movement in the tree lines ahead. As the morning fog cleared, over 200 infantrymen and six Mark VI Tiger tanks appeared and began to counterattack.
Speaker: So think about this. Okay, this is the the magnitude of that. They're 18 men and two little tanks. Yeah. Compared to those 200 infantry men. And army. And those ah Mark VI Tiger tanks.
Speaker: So 18 men with two armored vehicles against 200 infantry. Faced with only infantry, there's no strategic or tactical way Murphy's men could hold the line. Second, add the armor. A single Tiger tank was nearly impossible to destroy by allied armor.
Speaker: To put into perspective, a single Tiger tank could take out more than 12 American tanks, before being crippled enough to finally be put down. It fired an 88mm shell, the most powerful of the German artillery, and it could decimate an entire town without any support.
Speaker: Six of these advanced on Murphy and his 18 men. Six. The odds in this case are pretty much like as low to zero as you can get.
Speaker: But this is why Murphy's a hero. Okay. This is amazing. Seeing the approaching force, the tank destroyers open fire on the tigers, but they have no effect.
Speaker: Both are destroyed within the first 30 minutes of the attack. Murphy radios in for artillery barrage, giving exact coordinates to the enemy's position. As the shells begin to fall, he and the rest of his men watch in horror as the American artillery shells bounce off the approaching Tiger tanks, even after direct hits.
Speaker: Opening the map and putting it on the ground in his foxhole, Murphy weighs the options. He then turns to his platoon sergeant and he yells, get the hell out of here. That's an order.
Speaker: I'll hold the line. Go now. His sergeant hesitantly pulls the men back, leaving Murphy alone on the line. o German troops and armor are now only 200 yards away.
Speaker: Murphy rises over the edge of his pox hole and he fires his carbine until his ammunition ran out. The artillery continues to fall, taking out more German infantry.
Speaker: Now, just 150 yards away, Murphy calls in new coordinates for the artillery. Keep it coming, he screams into the radio as the shells fall. He grabs a dropp dropped rifle and expels its ammunition into the approaching line.
Speaker: Now, just 100 yards away, he calls in new coordinates and the barrage continues. The Tigers and the German artillery unleash on his position. He fires his sidearm at the line, trying to compensate for distance.
Speaker: He looks around in desperation. Atop one of the burning tank destroyers, he spots an unspoiled Browning.50 caliber machine gun. He wraps the radio around his shoulder, runs to the burning vehicle, climbs to the top, and opens fire on the approaching German line.
Speaker: The.50 caliber begins cutting down German infantry. Now only 50 yards away. He calls in the new coordinates to the artillery teams. They call back asking how close the enemy is.
Speaker: He radios that he will hand the radio to the Germans so that they can give them their exact location. Smart ass. He continues to expel rounds from the Browning machine gun.
Speaker: The vehicle continues to burn around him, searing his hands and his clothes. Ugh. Now, only 25 yards away, the Tigers, German artillery, and infantrymen are firing at what they believe to be a full line of American GIs.
Speaker: Murphy continues to fire. He reloads the Browning and drops the hammer again, killing anything he sees. Both American and German artillery is now falling around him.
Speaker: And now, only 10 yards away, he starts throwing every grenade he has at the line of Germans. The Tigers halt as American artillery continues to fall.
Speaker: Murphy depletes the rounds from his browning. He watches the German infantry begin to retreat. Then, for reasons that he questioned for the rest of his life, the Tigers begin to pull back.
Speaker: With the vehicle now entirely consumed by fire and his rounds depleted, Murphy leaps from the wreck wreckage and begins to retreat. Behind him, the tank destroyer finally explodes with such a force that it knocks Murphy to the ground. He eventually gets back and gets to his remaining men, regroups, and then clears the woods of any remaining Germans.
Speaker: For his action in this engagement, Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor on June 2, 1945. By this time, Murphy was the most decorated soldier ever or in that war.
Speaker: Audie Murphy was sent home from the war on June 10th, 1945 to national acclaim. He returned to tech Texas and began to pursue a career in acting, appearing in over 40 films, including the 1955 film To Hell and Back, which was based on the memoir that he wrote about himself.
Speaker: Murphy also wrote country music songs, and he was also a put. Many soldiers were also ashamed to speak about their symptoms that they were having, right? Because you know Murphy continued through the 60s and some of the 70s, and he would see soldiers come back, and they were ashamed of the things that they were feeling, which we now know as PTSD. Yeah. I mean, they were kind of told to be ashamed of it. Right. times And they felt like they were cowardly. And so when Audie Murphy recognized the same symptoms in Korean War and Vietnam veterans, he spoke out candidly about his own struggles and used his influence to call on the government to pay more attention to the issue, to study the emotional impact of combat and to extend health care benefits to veterans, which would later happen.
Speaker: Unfortunately, he didn't live to see it. Yeah. He was a founding member of the National Veterans Foundation and served on the board of the World War II Memorial Foundation. Murphy did struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, a kind of yeah a condition that was not well understood at the time.
Speaker: He suffered from nightmares and flashbacks. He had financial difficulties for much of his civilian life, but eventually he was able to pull himself... the dude ah He just was able to pull himself back up and together again.
Speaker: and he did have a level of success before he ultimately died in a plane crash in Roanoke, Virginia on May 28th, 1971. A plane crash took this motherfucker out? Yep. God damn it.
Speaker: And his body was recovered two days later, which happened to be Memorial Day of 1971. Yeah.
Speaker: So in addition, um don't know how to pronounce half these words I'm about to pronounce, but here we go. Okay. Oui, oui. Oui. In addition to his nation's highest honor, in addition to his, name the United States highest honor, the medal of honor, The Texan, Audie Murphy, earned the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit, the prized Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Bronze Star with Cluster, a Purple Heart with Cluster, the Presidential Unit Citation, the French Fros-Rogère,
Speaker: the French Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre with a palm and silver star, the French Liberation Medal, the Belgian Croix de Guerre with palm, and campaign ribbons.
Speaker: 28 medals and citations in all. Murphy spent 400 days on the front lines in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany and was officially credited with having killed, wounded, or captured 240 enemy soldiers.
Speaker: And he saved the lives of many of his own men. Yet he was still too young to vote. And that is the story of Audie Murphy.
Speaker: Jeffrey. Yes. I'm going to tell you story. Tell me a story. In 1906, a young Irish immigrant was hired as a cook for a wealthy family living in Oyster Bay on Long Island. i know this one.
Speaker: That doesn't surprise me. I know this one. Within a few weeks, six out of 11 people living in the residence had become dangerously ill. The family hired a sanitary engineer named George Sober to investigate.
Speaker: He immediately believed the cause was the freshwater clams the family frequently ate. So he did a rapid investigation, interviewed the residents of the home and the staff. When he realized that some of the sick people hadn't eaten the clams, he quickly amended his findings and had to reassess.
Speaker: He found his culprit and became the first to describe a healthy carrier of the Salmonella typhi disease. He began a deeper dive into the investigation.
Speaker: In 1907, he pretty much stalked a young woman named Mary Milan throughout Manhattan. She had been the cook. The du dude stalked her. like he like Imagine the worst sleuth you've ever seen. just like yeah right He had it pinpointed. So he tracked her activities and jobs and found that she was unknowingly, unknowingly infecting those around her with a disease she didn't realize she had.
Speaker: He attempted many times to obtain samples of her feces, urine, and blood. How? Yeah. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? so But they did they did throw it out the window back then. They They did.
Speaker: yeah Well, yeah. He's dead under the window. Excuse me. But as any of us would have guessed, Mary didn't think too highly of this idea. And she caught him one time. She literally chased him away.
Speaker: So Mary wasn't known for being a people person. She was a cook. She loved cooking. But she was a little bit brash.
Speaker: He wasn't deterred. She was Irish. She was Irish. Okay. Irish. Yep. So he doesn't give up. He's like, man I'm going to get that poop. right. So he looks into her previous work history and found that eight of the families, that ah she had worked for eight families and seven seven of them had experienced cases of typhoid.
Speaker: Out of 3,000 cases of typhoid that year, Mary was likely to blame for most, if not all, just because of how rapidly it spreads.
Speaker: Unfortunately, the vaccination against salmonella typhi was not created until 1911. So we're a few years before that. And then antibiotic treatment wasn't developed until 1948. he knew he had contain her.
Speaker: so he knew he had to contain her He reached out to Dr. Biggs of the New York Department of Health, and together with a Dr. Joe Baker, they were tasked with, quote, bringing her in.
Speaker: Mary did not go willingly. The Irish really came out. She managed to elude the doctors and the police that were sent for her for five hours. When she was finally caught, she fought hard, and Dr. Baker had to physically restrain her as they traveled to the hospital for testing.
Speaker: She was forced to provide samples. And I don't even want to really know how that went down because we've tried to get poop samples from people before, but like forcing someone to give you a stool sample.
Speaker: i don't even want to know what happened there. Maybe they put her in the room and said, you're not leaving until you give us this. Just a possibility, right? Indoor plumbing wasn't really a thing. So it's not like she's flushing it. ain't got a toilet. hey But that, yeah. Okay. So they got it somehow.
Speaker: um Her stool returned a positive result. um She was forced into quarantine. She was transferred to Riverside Hospital on North Border Island. She was placed in a cottage to live where she couldn't infect anybody else.
Speaker: So forced quarantine. Two years later, after repeated positive samples, they took like 170 samples of her stool over the course of the two years and like 150 them or something like that came back positive. And they did multiple experimental treatments, including repeated laxatives, I guess, to try and what cleanse her gut um and brewer's yeast.
Speaker: She then attempted to sue the health department. It went nowhere. Nobody ever explained to her what it meant to be a carrier because she couldn't understand. She wasn't sick. She didn't feel sick. She wasn't unwell. She didn't have any of the symptoms. So she's stuck in this cottage all alone on some island and no one's telling her anything.
Speaker: So they just continued to offer tests and surgeries. She refused to allow them to remove her gallbladder and she demanded to be released because that was one of the suggestions they had. In 1910, the new health commissioner vowed to free Mary under the agreement that she would be helped to find a job nowhere near food.
Speaker: She was released, but she immediately violated the agreement. She went back to work in the kitchens of unsuspecting families. So she again was a threat to the public. One of her new jobs was as a cook for Sloan Maternity in Manhattan. She had applied under the name Mary Brown.
Speaker: In her three months of work there, she contaminated at least 25 doctors, patients, and nurses, two of whom died. She was caught again, then sent back to the North Border Island into that small little college. But weren't they also telling her to wash your hands?
Speaker: Yes. Right? Yes. Was that not part of it It was, but it didn't fix anything. But and but she wasn't doing that.
Speaker: I told you, she was stubborn. Yeah. So she was quarantined there for over 20 Damn. On Christmas morning, 1932, a delivery man found Mary on the floor of her cottage.
Speaker: She had had a massive stroke and could no longer walk. She was transferred to the proper hospital where she was taken care of for another six years until her death. She was buried on a small plot at St. Raymond Cemetery.
Speaker: Upon her death, an autopsy was performed and they found that she was shedding the salmonella typhi bacteria from gallstones. Some people claim that there was no autopsy actually performed and that they just announced that this happened to settle the nerves of the the public and to and change people's mental picture of what the system was.
Speaker: At the time of her death, New York health officials had identified more than 400 additional healthy carriers of the typhoid bacteria, but none were treated the way Mary was.
Speaker: So we make jokes about typhoid Mary all the time, right? You know, when someone starts hacking up a lung in front of you, you're like, all right, back out of here, typhoid Mary or whatever. You know, we joke about like mission zero.
Speaker: um So reportedly she did end up finding peace and comfort in religion during the years that she was alone in confinement. um But it has to give you pause to think about how she was treated. So the case of Mary Milan brought about a lot of concerns regarding ethics and morals and the way that patients are treated.
Speaker: In relation to many diseases that have evolved since typhoid, carriers and the quote healthy ill, so people who are infected with something but not necessarily showing symptoms or whatever, have continually been treated like lepers and pariahs.
Speaker: Mary became the victim of the press and social attitudes against disease in general. Her doctors frequently took the time to push testing and treatments on her, but never stopped to explain anything to her or take the time to talk to her.
Speaker: So Mary died alone. Damn. And she is now sitting in a weird place in medical history because the term typhoid Mary is actually in medical journaler journals. you know So it's now this this thing that became a thing because they quarantined her and they did all this stuff.
Speaker: But she was treated inhumanely. Right. Absolutely. You know, there there were better ways to go about it. Yeah. They could have talked to her. They could have explained. Maybe that would have motivated her to do something or given her other options.
Speaker: So that's the story of Typhoid Mary. That's the story of Typhoid Mary. That was good.
