The press release confirming the award was dated May 24, 1945. The presentation ceremony — at which Lieutenant General Alexander Patch presented the medal near Salzburg, Austria — was June 2, 1945. The formal General Orders document, GO No. 65, was dated August 9, 1945.
The separation between the January 26 action, the May 24 press release, and the August 9 General Orders is part of the bureaucratic timeline of Army awards — the action happens, the recommendation is made, the documentation is assembled, the award is confirmed, the formal orders are issued. The presentation in June 1945 occurred before the war in Europe was entirely resolved at the administrative level, while the Army was still in the process of winding down its European theater operations.
Murphy’s comment when asked why he had climbed onto the burning tank destroyer — “They were killing my friends” — is one of the most quoted statements in the accounts of his wartime service. It appears in multiple sources as his explanation, offered in later years when interviewers pressed him for the internal logic of an action that looked from the outside like something between supreme courage and utter disregard for personal survival. The statement is attributed rather than directly transcribed from a dated interview, and it should be read as a reported quotation with that caveat. But it is consistent with what the documented record shows: Lattie Tipton was dead. Men Murphy had served with for two years were dead. The Germans in the snow-camouflage suits were killing the people who remained.