Real-Life War Heroes Who Were Basically Captain America

FIRST LT. AUDIE MURPHYReal Life Captain Americas Audie Murphy
In 1942, 16-year-old, 5’5”, 110 lb. Audie Murphy applied to the Marines. They didn’t want him. Neither did the Air Force. (Starting to sound familiar?) But the Army took a chance and sent him into battle. In 1944, after Murphy had been promoted to corporal thanks to his shooting skills, a German machine gun crew in southern France tricked him into thinking they’d surrendered, then shot his best friend. Big mistake. Murphy went full-on berserker, killed everyone in the gun trench, then used their guns to kill two more machine gun crews, a dozen snipers, and everyone else within 100 yards. Six months later, German tanks ripped most of Murphy’s unit apart during another stand in France. Murphy, still an adorable 5’5”, charged the battlefield, hopped in a crippled M-10 Tank Destroyer, and unloaded with its .50 caliber machine gun. Oh, did we mention that the M-10 was on fire? But Murphy kept shooting for an hour until he ran out of bullets. Then he dismounted and walked back to his men as the M-10 exploded behind him. (Seriously.) Thirty-three medals later, Audie Murphy had completed his transformation from weakling underdog to bona fide super soldier.

It gets badasser…: This stuff is just extra ammuntion: After becoming addicted to antidepressants, Murphy decided he needed to quit. So he locked himself in a motel room for a week and toughed it out, cold turkey. Then he wrote an autobiography entitled To Hell and Back, and later became the lead actor in its film adaptation. After production, Murphy demanded that certain scenes from his life be cut because he thought they weren’t believable … even though they were 100 percent accurate.