Huey: The distinguished bravery of an American military hero
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The Declaration of Independence gave us our freedom, and guys like this one from Texas have helped preserve that freedom for the past 250 years. Going by his middle name of Leon because he didn’t like his first name, in ONE HOUR this 5-foot-5 inch 120-pound Texan sent an entire German regiment to the great beyond.
Leon was the seventh of 12 children born to Emmett and Josie Bell near Celeste, Texas. After their father deserted them, Leon helped raise his siblings by dropping out of school to pick cotton and help feed them.
Their mother died when he was 16, so all he could do was watch his siblings be taken away to an orphanage because he wasn’t old enough to qualify as an adult. Soon after, he enlisted in the U.S. Army by using a falsified affidavit created by his older sister.
Following boot camp, Leon was assigned to the 15th Regiment in North Africa, and upon entering combat in July of 1943 during the invasion of Sicily, he proved himself to be a superior marksman.
When Leon was assigned to a company in Italy, he fought in the Volturno River campaign and earned a Bronze Star for bravery under fire while capturing Rome. During those times he was promoted to second lieutenant.
After being awarded that field commission, he was given command of Company B, which was attacked the next afternoon by German infantry near the Colmar Pocket. Leon sent his battalion to the woods while he remained at the front line firing from a tank that had received a direct hit from German artillery a few minutes earlier and was ablaze.
Against the attack of those 250 infantrymen, Leon fired the 50-caliber cannon at the German regiment even as his men pleaded with him from the woods to retreat for fear he would be killed.
Leon’s company remained in place as ordered while he directed his ire toward the German infantry. With the enemy regiment trained on him, he hunkered down on that M4 turret that might blow at any time but continued firing at the advancing infantry.
Over the next hour, the German soldiers tried every weapon they had to try and take out the crazy American atop that tank, but he continued to hold his ground, firing at them until the barrel of the gun turned red hot and the trigger mechanism as well as the turret reached such a blistering temperature he had to put on leather gloves. Then he loaded another brass magazine and continued firing.
Although exposed to enemy artillery from all sides, his nonstop assault knocked off the entire regiment in 63 minutes. The brave Texan remained on that smoldering tank until the last minute, repelling the onslaught of German soldiers on all sides, and so in the end he took out the entire garrison singlehandedly and stopped the German forces dead in their tracks.
Less than 10 minutes from the time he jumped off the tank, it exploded at a ferocity that would’ve ripped him to shreds. This fearless Texan became the most decorated soldier in history while still a teenager!
After returning home to a hero’s welcome, his face was plastered everywhere, and those wartime escapades made him quite popular in the Hollywood crowd, many of whom were war veterans themselves.
Leon became the talk of the town and over the next few years Neon Leon appeared in 44 movies with the biggest one being his wartime autobiography “To Hell and Back” that made him the only actor in Hollywood to have portrayed himself in a movie.
This World War 2 legend was eventually diagnosed with PTSD after confessing publicly that he not only had become addicted to narcotics but was sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow.
Leon’s end came by way of a plane crash in 1971 when his Aero Commander crashed into Brush Mountain near Catawba, Virginia, and took away the bravest man who ever graced our armed forces, saving so many American men that day that without the guts and glory of Audie Leon Murphy it’s quite possible you wouldn’t even be here to read this.
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