DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture Farmersville, Texas, summer of 1945. The war in Europe is won.
And this little town has got something to celebrate that most towns could only dream of. See, one of their own is coming home, and not just any hometown boy. We're talking about Audie Murphy.
The most decorated soldier the marker will let me describe, and brother, the marker doesn't hold back. On his eighteenth birthday, young Audie Murphy walked into the Greenville Post Office and enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Eighteen years old. Whatever he was walking into, he could not have known the full measure of it. More than two years of combat followed.
North Africa. Sicily. Italy.
France. He earned every Army citation for valor; every single one, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. Now, when a man like that comes back to Collin County, you don't just wave from the porch.
On June 15th, 1945, Farmersville gathered (and I mean gathered) several thousand people crowding the town square to welcome him home. Several thousand. In a small Texas town, that's not a crowd, that's a reckoning.
And the whole country was watching. Life Magazine put it right there on the cover of their July 16th, 1945 issue: the Farmersville ceremony, the family reunion, all of it, calling it what it was: a grateful nation and a grateful hometown commemorating one of their own. A boy who enlisted at a post office, and came back to fill the square.
What the marker says
With Allied victory in World War II Europe secured, Farmersville celebrated the return of the area's most famous citizen soldier. On his 18th birthday, Audie Murphy enlisted in the U.S. Army at the Greenville Post Office. In more than two years of combat, he fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France and earned every Army citation for valor, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. His homecoming drew an audience of several thousand to the town square. Life Magazine's July 16, 1945 issue made the Farmersville ceremony and Murphy's family reunion its cover story, commemorating the efforts of a grateful nation and hometown. (2008)