Audie Murphy's screen autobiography is a much better film than it has any right to be... The Army provides a Depression-era kid from East Texas with a strong family structure that he has never really experienced...<br /><br />In 1937, a young Audie Murphy (played by Gordon Gebert as a boy, by Murphy himself later) is forced to become the head of a family with an ailing mother and an absent father... He drops out of grade school and goes to work full time to provide for his younger siblings until, at roughly the same time, World War II starts and his mother dies... <br /><br />By enlisting in, Murphy can provide more money for his brothers, but neither the Navy nor the Marines were interested in the small guy...<br /><br />In the Army, Murphy is promoted to Corporal on the troop ship carrying him overseas where he joins the 3rd Infantry Division, B Company, 15th Regiment... It soon becomes apparent that the likable 'baby face kid,' hardly old enough to shave, has a genuine aptitude for soldiering...<br /><br />After North Africa, his outfit takes part in the invasions of Sicily, Anzio and Southern France... In every engagement, Murphy steps up and excels as a soldier... At the same time, he becomes friends with Brandon (Charles Drake), Johnson (Marshall Thompson), and Kerrigan (Jack Kelly). He sees himself as part of a unit, and everything that he does is meant to advance the unit, not the individual... Murphy liked to work alone, putting only himself at risk...<br /><br />The one long scene that moves away from the Militaryan interlude in an Italian town where he meets Maria (Susan Kohner) and her family, is embarrassingly bad... As long as the focus stays on the platoon's activities on the battlefield, the film is in fine shape... Director Jesse Hibbs makes the cold mud and rain of the Italian campaign believably real, especially a series of scenes revolving around a farmhouse and a burning tank...<br /><br />One might assume that Murphy's indomitable courage would be described as Rambolike heroics, but in comparing the film with the official combat reports, it is clear that Murphy became an astounding soldier by skill, training, intelligence, and luck... He was an equal opportunity soldier, doing everything the front line combatant is required to do in order to take and hold ground through Sicily, Italy, France, and into Germany...<br /><br />All of the events recounted in the film take place before Murphy was 19 years old... In that brief military career, Audie L. Murphy becomes one of the best fighting combat soldiers of the last century... He never really seemed to care about the medals or glory, just the men of his unit and friends who fall down in the European Theater of Operations... <br /><br />Murphy died tragically on May 28, 1971, when the private plane in which he was a passenger crashed into a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia... He was 46.<br /><br />His last film role was earlier that year, playing Jesse James in 'A Time for Dying.'