The Seventh Army drove on toward the Vosges Mountains after the landings in south France. Of an original complement of 235 officers and men in B Company, Fifteenth Infantry, Third Division, which had landed in North Africa early in 1943, there were only a few originals left. Audie Murphy, who had joined in time for the Sicilian invasion, ranked as one of its veterans. The tough young combat soldier had learned to be a scrapper at an early age. Born in a sharecropper's cabin near Farmersville, Texas, June 20, 1925 (near Kingston, Hunt County, Texas), he was one of eleven children crowded into a four-room shack with the father and mother. In 1939, the father deserted his ailing wife and eleven children and never came back. Audie became the family mainstay, borrowing a twenty-two-caliber rifle with which to hunt rabbits. When he didn't have cartridges, he used a slingshot. He worked at a variety of jobs. His mother died in 1941 and two of his sisters and one of his brothers were placed in an orphanage. While Audie was stationed at Camp Wolters, he sent every spare dime back to the orphanage. After basic training, he was shipped to Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, for fourteen more weeks of training, and there was contained a private war between Audie Murphy and his well-wishers. He was so slight and babyfaced that his officers seemed to want to protect him. At Camp Wolters, they had tried to ship him to Cooks and Bakers School, but he fought the idea. At Fort Meade, they tried to get him assigned as part of the permanent force, but he wiggled out of that. They placed him in the Post Exchange as a clerk, but somehow young Murphy managed to land in North Africa as an infantry replacement for the Third Division. In the months that followed, Audie had seen many comrades get killed or seriously wounded. But somehow, despite his always being in the very thick of the fighting, he managed to avoid the fate of his comrades. In those months, he became skilled with Tommy gun, Garand rifle, M-1 carbine, Browning Automatic Rifle, and all the other lethal tools the modern infantryman uses in the pursuit of his deadly trade. He wasn't always lucky in the strictest sense. A mortar shell had exploded between his feet in France, and the concussion had knocked him out and broken the carbine in his hands. But, even then, his only real injury was a wound in the heel. The weather turned cold. The Germans were masters of the art of the slow, stubborn retreat, and the Third Division had suffered heavily. The terrain was thickly wooded and, though frost was thick on the ground every morning, during the day General Mud took over and units had to plow through the icy gumbo. Audie's company had been in the thick of it. One day he was called back to regimental headquarters where he and two other bearded non-coms were field-promoted to second lieutenants. The officer who promoted them shook their hands, smiled, and told them, "You are now gentlemen by Act of Congress. Shave, take a bath, then get back into the lines." Later, after three days of tough fighting through endless woods and fields, Second Lieutenant Audie Murphy was leading a B Company platoon. The dawn had been cold and the October day was raw. The American artillery had opened up with a roaring, walking barrage behind which the Third Division was to advance. Lieutenant Murphy led this men off the trail and as he did so a rifle cracked flatly and his walk-talkie radioman, who was only a few feet away, fell with a bullet hole just above the left eye. "Sniper!" yelled Murphy as he jumped for cover, a fraction too late. A red-hot iron slammed against his hip. Audie raised his carbine. There was a slight movement as a camouflage covering was lifted from a foxhole. The carbine spat flame and the sniper was dead. Bad weather had slowed Murphy's journey to the hospital, and when he got there, the doctor found that gangrene had set in. It had cost Audie several pounds of infected flesh, which he could ill afford to spare, but in time, he had recovered. He was needed on the line. The mortality in combat officers was terribly high. The dull light of dawn spread across the woods and fields near Holtzwihr, France, the morning of January 26, 1945. There was a gloomy, foreboding look about the woods. The black-etched tree trunks and branches stood out against the knee-deep snow. An icy wind swept down from the Vosges Mountains and cut through thick woolen clothing. Audie's B Company had been given order to "drive to the edge of the woods facing Holtzwihr, dig in. . . and hold." They had reached the edge of the woods facing Holtzwihr, all right, but digging into the frozen earth was another matter. And there was yet another part of the order to be filled. . .to hold the ground. Audie stamped back and forth. It was no place for a warm-blooded Texas boy. He could hear the men muttering. They didn't know the grand strategy of war--nor did he, for that matter. An infantryman's field of vision is limited from one ditch to another; one tree trunk to the next; one empty clip of ammunition to the next loaded one. But it was clear that the veteran Third Division was having one of the hardest fights of its distinguished career. They had reached the Rhine, and beyond the Rhine was Germany. Some American units had already crossed that famous river. But the job of the Third Division was to climinate the Colmar Pocket, a strongly fortified area reaching south to the Swiss border. The Colmar Pocket was a constant menace to the American advance. The Germans knew their business. They were posted in easily defensible positions with fine fields of fire. They had plenty of armor and had the advantage of being on the defensive. Audie called battalion headquarters at dawn, "Where is our support?" he asked. "It will be up. Hang on. The attack will be delayed." Audie studied the cold woods and he didn't like what he saw. Holtzwihr was about a mile off across the fields. The church steeple showed up like a thin finger against the dull sky. Beside the road leading toward Holtzwihr were the two tank destroyers, which had moved up during the night. Audie walked over to them and banged on the side of one of them. "Hey! Rise and shine! You'd better get these tin cans off the road! It's getting light! They'll blast you if you don't" An officer stuck his head out. "If we move into those woods, we'll get bogged down," he growled. "You haven't any cover!" The officer yawned. "Maybe so, but we sure have a fine field of fire." Audie shrugged and walked over to his machine-gun squad. "How's your ammo?" he asked the sergeant. "Four hundred rounds, maybe." Audie whistled and shrugged. "Don't miss, sarge." It was lonely there in the woods as the light grew. A one artillery observer showed up, blue with cold. Audie rubbed his unshaven jaw and rang up headquarters again. "What's the scoop? he asked. "No change. Hang on." "Yeah. . . hang on . . . " The long morning dragged by. Suddenly there was a rushing, whining noise in the air. The German barrage roared in, throwing up murderous clods of frozen earth, knocking out the machine-gun crew, hitting the first of the tank destroyers, killing three of the crew while the rest of them poured out of the smoking TD. Six German tanks rumbled out of the town. They split up into sections of three each. One section disappeared into the woods on one side of the road and the other vanished into the woods on the other side. Audie whistled softly. "Here they come. Trying to flank us from both sides." White dots began to move across the snowy fields toward the American lines. German infantry wearing white snow caps! The second tank destroyer kicked over its engine and the unexpected roaring startled some of the newer men close by. The gears were meshed and then the heavy vehicle slid helplessly into a ditch. The angle of the stranded vehicle made the guns useless. The crew wasted no time. They abandoned the helpless TD. The artillery observer raised his head. "I can't get headquarters yet!" he called out. (pp. 146-154, Shirreffs)