Of Mud, Mules, and Mountains

Chapter 8: My Mother and Audie Murphy

Mignano Italy November, 1943

The town of Mignano sits trapped between steep, craggy peaks, their sheer faces scarred by war. The Nazis are dug in, their defenses embedded in the rock like stubborn roots. The strategy is clear — avoid the town and strike straight at the mountains surrounding it. But the terrain is merciless. Cliffs rise like walls, gorges cut deep into the earth, and even surefooted pack mules often slip, falling to their deaths. When the animals fail, the soldiers must take over, crawling on hands and knees, dragging supplies through mud that swallows boots whole.

Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) — Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist famous for his WWII characters, Willie and Joe, depicted the hardships of American soldiers with grit and humor.

On a reconnaissance mission, Audie Murphy and his squad find themselves stranded on the side of a mountain above Mignano. They walk straight toward a German tank, so expertly camouflaged that they miss it. As the snout of the cannon is lowered at them, they run like hell for a clump of bushes. One soldier breaks his leg in the rush. They drag him into a ditch and lose the tank.

Several assaults on nearby Mount Rotondo are pushed back. Lines are confused by enemy fire. Murphy mistakes a Nazi patrol for allies. When he realizes his mistake, he starts firing. Now the enemy knows where they are. With no choice, they scramble up the rocks, reaching an abandoned quarry where they settle in for the night.

At dawn, they ambush a Nazi patrol. The fight is brutal and quick, but the cost is high. Three German soldiers lay dying.

Mauldin drew six cartoons a week during the war. He was only 23 when awarded the Pulizer Prize.

“The wounded must be got under cover. The peculiar ethics of war condone our riddling the bodies with lead. But then they were soldiers. (The machine gun) transformed them into human beings again; and the rules say that we cannot leave them unprotected against a barrage of their own artillery,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy’s squad is forced to stay with them, listening to their labored breaths as a cold mountain rain washes over the quarry.

“When dawn breaks, two of the Germans are dead. Their eyes stare glassily. Their mouths are open and the old man’s swollen tongue protrudes between his teeth,” Murphy wrote.

For three days artillery rains down, death echoing off the cliffs. The men remain trapped.

On the third day, the third German dies. In the light of the moon that night “the faces of the dead seem green and unearthly. That is bad for morale, as it makes a man reflect on what his own life may come to.”

After the war, Mauldin became a political cartoonist, advocating civil liberties. He also appeared in John Huston’s film The Red Badge of Courage (1951) starring with Audie Murphy.

Murphy is near breaking. “My eyeballs burn, my bones ache; and my muscles twitch in exhaustion. Oh, to sleep and never awaken. The war is without beginning, without end. It goes on forever.”

Then, at last, the sound they have been waiting for — American artillery. The shells scream through the air, bursting against the rocks like salvation.

“If there is one thing a dogface loves, it is artillery — his own.”

American Red Cross workers, too, must contend with mountains and mud.

From a Life Magazine story pasted in Flo’s album

On Christmas Day, 1943, high in the rain-drenched peaks, a soldier huddles in his foxhole, staring at a can of C-rations — his holiday meal. Then, out of the swirling mist, she appears. Isabella Hughes of Baltimore, a Red Cross clubmobile worker, crouches on the lip of his trench, one hand gripping a box of doughnuts, the other holding a steaming pot of coffee. The soldier blinks, then exclaims, “Good Lord, sweetheart! What in hell are you doing here?”

Isabella Hughes was one of the first ARC workers to get to Italy, in 1943. She would later join Flo’s clubmobile crew in Naples.

The clubmobile was a two and a half ton Dodge truck fitted with a kitchen and windows. Workers sometimes slept in it or under it.

Italy’s roads, slick with rain and churned to sludge, are brutal even for military transport. The clubmobile — a sturdy machine — proves no match for the mountains. When roads vanish into goat trails, the Red Cross workers adapt. They take the Army’s weapons carriers, pushing higher, until even those fail. Then come the donkeys and mules.

Two clubmobile workers, Margaret Decker of Towaco, New Jersey, and Gladys Currie of Greenwich, Connecticut, volunteer for an impossible task: deliver coffee and doughnuts to a unit stationed atop a remote peak. No road leads there — only a narrow mule track winding up the mountain’s spine. The Army offers them transport, if they’re willing to ride donkeys up the perilous slope. They accept without hesitation.

The climb is slow, the air thin. Their donkeys pick careful steps along the treacherous trail. The doughnuts are packed onto a mule. At last, they reach the summit. The men are waiting — shaved, cleaned — their arrival announced on the camp bulletin board like the coming of long-lost friends. As the ARC workers pour coffee, the soldiers form a circle around them, an island of warmth in the cold mountain war. Mortars shriek in the distance. Shells thunder through the valleys below. But for a moment, they all pause, talk, and remember something beyond the battle.

Their bravery does not go unnoticed. When the U.S. Army Rangers commend Lois N. Berney of Fallon, Nevada — a clubmobile worker once secretary to Harry Hopkins — it is understood that the honor belongs to all of them. From General Mark W. Clark down to the last rifleman, the Army recognizes the Red Cross women not just for their courage, but for bringing something human to the inhuman mountains.

From Audie Murphy’s autobiography, “To Hell and Back,” and from “At His Side–The Story of The American Red Cross Overseas in WWII” by George Korson

Ch. 9: https://tradeswomn.medium.com/american-red-cross-training-261d5f88900c