American soldier Audie Leon Murphy, the most decorated combat veteran of World War II, in later years acted in popular movies and westerns.

Audie Murphy lived in a large sharecropper family as the seventh of twelve children. His father abandoned the family, and as a teenager, his mother died. Murphy dropped out school in fifth grade to pick cotton and to find other work to help to support his family, and his necessary skill with a hunting rifle fed them. His older sister helped him to falsify documentation about his birth date to meet the minimum-age requirement for enlisting in the military.

Murphy attempted to join the Marines and Navy first, but his small size duly caused them to turn him away. Audie Murphy lied about his age to enlist i