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Forlorn, forgotten, the little boy dreamed of a Christmas he couldn't have — until war hero Audie Murphy made it come true.
BY JOHN T. ELLIOTT
■ On Christmas Day of 1947, I was driving along Wilshire Boulevard, one of the main drags in Los Angeles. At the corner of La Brea, I stopped to pick up a thin young fellow who was bumming a ride.
He looked around 20 or 21, and he had brown hair, sad eyes, and a face that teased my memory. He was dressed in the kind of Army jacket General Eisenhower introduced in the last war, and a pair of unpressed grey flannels.
As he hopped into the car, he said softly — there was a trace of the South in his voice — "Thanks for picking me up." And then he smiled. But it wasn't a cheerful smile. It was the kind of telling smile with which a man turns the pockets of his soul inside out — and somehow I knew at once that
here was a young man who was very much alone in the world.
Well, no boy, no human being should feel alone and neglected and unhappy on Christmas; so, to be friendly, I began to talk about the holiday spirit and what kind of Christmases I used to enjoy as a kid. And as I talked, this young fellow beside me started to loosen up and talk some himself.
"I don't want. you to think," he said, "that I'm complaining, but I don't reckon I've ever had what you'd call a real Christmas — you know, with a tree and all the trimmings."
"How come?" I asked.
"Well," he drawled on, "I come from a pretty poor family. Matter of fact, 'poor' is too rich a (Continued on page S3)
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