A Photo Album Tells the Story
Chapter Two: My Mother and Audie Murphy
The photo album that my mother, Flo Martin (Wick), shared with Audie Murphy when they reconnected in 1955 is massive. The scrapbook is filled with photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, and travel paraphernalia and it tells the story of Mom’s two years as an American Red Cross (ARC) “donut girl” in Europe during World War II.
It also tells the story of the Third Infantry Division, the only American division that fought the Nazis on every front-North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. “The Fightin’ Third” had more casualties-nearly 35,000-than any other division, and it holds the record for high combat citations.
Throughout our childhoods my brothers and I pulled out the album, looked through it, and listened to our mother’s war stories. We kids especially liked the sketches by Flo’s comrade Liz Elliott of the everyday lives of the “donut gals.”
When my mother died in 1983 at the age of 70, I claimed the album and it’s been stored in garages and closets ever since, occasionally brought out for perusal by relatives or friends with an interest in World War II. For a time, it lived in a mold-infected storage room and so it was infected along with other archives. I exposed each page to sunlight in an effort to reduce the mold and that helped, but when I really wanted to examine the book, I donned a respirator to avoid breathing in clouds of invisible mold spores.
Mom was a scrapbook maker and for that I am now grateful as I try to piece together the events of her life during the war. Perhaps she had the idea for the album even before she sailed to Europe on a hospital ship in May 1944. I do know that the act of putting it together when she returned home after the war in 1946 salved her sadness at the deaths of so many and helped her readjust to life stateside where it seemed Americans had moved on and no longer wanted to think or talk about the war.
Recently I went through the album page by page, photographing all. That’s when I discovered that Flo had had a friendship with Audie Murphy that began somewhere in France when she served him donuts and continued after the war.
This story follows two narratives: one chronicles Flo Wick and the other chronicles Audie Murphy. They were both attached to the Third Division but mostly in different parts of the North African and European theaters. Their paths intersect in the Vosges mountains of France and as the Third pushed its way into Germany. For Audie’s tale I’m referencing his autobiography To Hell and Back, as well as letters and artifacts saved in Flo’s album.
A Little Background
She came of age during the Depression
Born in 1913, Florence Wick had graduated high school at 16 after being allowed to skip ahead a grade. Her class graduated in 1929½. Flo was excited about the prospect of going to college. She planned to enroll at the state college, but the Great Depression intervened. Instead, she completed a secretarial course at a trade school. At 17 she started working to help support her family. In 1931 she found a job as a stenographer for the Washington State Department of Highways.
By the time she learned about the ARC program, Flo had been working full time at that job for more than a decade. No doubt she was ready to do something else-maybe anything else. This seemed like an opportunity to travel outside of Washington State and to see other places in the world. And she was anxious to help the war effort.
He always wanted to be a soldier
Even as a little boy Audie Murphy had wanted to be a soldier. His share cropper father abandoned his mother and their children leaving the family destitute. Then, when he was 16, his mother died. Born in 1925, the seventh of twelve kids, Audie tried to provide for the others, dropping out of school in fifth grade to pick cotton for a dollar a day. But he knew he had to get out of Farmersville, Texas. He tried to join the paratroopers and the Marines, but was told he was too short at five feet five. The Army took him and trained him to be a soldier. The baby-faced kid earned the nickname Baby. He was already a good shot, having fed the family with wild game. He couldn’t wait to shoot the enemy.
Murphy was assigned to the Third Division, part of the Fifth Army under the command of General George Patton. He joined them in Sicily in 1943, on the way from Morocco and North Africa. They would fight their way through Italy and France into Germany. Murphy would be one of a very few of his company left standing and would become the most decorated American soldier of the war.
Chapter one: https://medium.com/@tradeswomn/my-mother-and-audie-murphy-a9232fd024af
Chapter 3: https://medium.com/@tradeswomn/flo-gets-a-telegram-9709152e8938
Originally published at http://mollymartin.blog on January 1, 2025.
