## January 26, 1945: Approximately 1400 Hours
The German counterattack came in the early afternoon, following an artillery barrage.
Murphy counted six tanks and approximately 250 infantry coming from the direction of Holtzwihr in white snow camouflage. The infantry were from the German 2nd Mountain Division, recently transferred from Norway — a formation that had been fighting in a very different kind of terrain and was now being committed to the Alsace defensive effort.
The M10s engaged first. The 3-inch rounds from the tank destroyers had limited effect against the frontal armor of the German armor. Then an 88mm shell hit the rear tank destroyer directly, killing its commander and gunner. The surviving crew withdrew into the woods.
The forward tank destroyer — the one about forty yards in front of Murphy’s position, straddling the narrow dirt road into the woods — maneuvered to engage but slid into a drainage ditch. With its main gun unable to bear on the enemy, its crew worked the .50- and .30-caliber machine guns at the advancing infantry, then abandoned the vehicle and withdrew.
Murphy ordered his men back into the forest, to covered positions. He stayed.
His field telephone was still connected to 1st Battalion headquarters. With the tank destroyers gone and his company behind him, he called in artillery on the advancing German infantry and armor, working the telephone while the Germans closed on his position and while he fired his M1 carbine at the infantry.
The artillery fire was coordinated with forward observer First Lieutenant Walter Weispfenning. Radio problems with Weispfenning’s equipment meant that Murphy was using the field phone to relay targets to battalion headquarters rather than calling fire directly. He called targets onto the advancing German infantry. He called smoke onto enemy positions to mark them for American fighter-bombers. He kept calling even as the rounds fell close to his own position.