By June 2, 1945, the war in Europe had ended. Germany had surrendered on May 8. The American forces in the European theater were in the process of occupation, redeployment, and demobilization. Murphy was still in uniform, still in Europe, present for the ceremony that General Alexander Patch organized to present the Medal of Honor to him.
Patch was the commander of the Seventh Army — Murphy’s army, the formation that had fought through southern France and into Austria. He had a comprehensive picture of the decoration records of the soldiers under his command, and his characterization of Murphy as “the most decorated American soldier in World War II” was not a casual statement. It was a claim made by an Army general with access to the records of his command.
The ceremony also included the Legion of Merit presentation. Murphy received both on June 2, 1945. The combination of these two awards at the same ceremony — the highest valor decoration in the American military and the Legion of Merit, which recognized sustained exceptional service — was itself unusual.
A news photograph from the ceremony shows Murphy in dress uniform with his decorations, in the specific setting of a formal military presentation. He was 19 or 20 years old, by one birth year or the other, in a uniform weighted with more medals than most soldiers see in a lifetime.
General Patch’s statement was widely reported and became the description that attached to Murphy for the rest of his life. Whether it was precisely accurate, in the sense of withstanding a rigorous comparison to every decoration record of every American soldier across all services, is the question the guardrails for this article flag for care. What is documented is that the commander of the Seventh Army said it, that it was based on his knowledge of his command’s records, and that subsequent historical comparison has not definitively displaced it.