Company B, 15th Infantry — Murphy’s company — experienced casualties so severe over the course of the war that the men Murphy knew at Anzio were largely different men from those he trained with, and the men at Holtzwihr were largely different from those at Anzio. The specific statistic from the HistoryNet account — that Company B, beginning the January 24 advance into the Bois de Riedwihr with 120 enlisted men and all its officers, had 18 enlisted men and Murphy as its only officer by the time it reached its position — was not an anomaly. It was the culmination of repeated attrition over more than a year.
The Army continued to function, and the division continued to advance, through the mechanism of replacements — new men fed into depleted units to maintain operational strength. The replacements arrived without the experience that surviving veterans had, and they died at higher rates until they accumulated the experience to survive or became casualties before they could. Murphy had survived where most of his companions had not, through some combination of skill, luck, and the particular characteristics that the wartime record documents but cannot fully explain.
## The Medal of Honor: Award Process and Timing
The process by which the Medal of Honor was awarded to Murphy involved multiple steps over several months.
The recommendation for the award was made by his commanding officers based on the January 26 action. The recommendation process involved documented accounts of the action, including eyewitness testimony from surviving members of the company and from officers who could attest to what had happened. The specific eyewitness described standing on the burning tank destroyer as “like standing on top of a time bomb.”