He was promoted to sergeant on December 13, 1943, and to staff sergeant on January 13, 1944. The 3rd Division was building toward the assault on the Winter Line and the eventual advance toward Anzio.
Murphy was hospitalized with malaria on January 21, 1944, and missed the initial Anzio landing on January 22. When he recovered and rejoined Company B, the unit was in the fighting around Cisterna — the First Battle of Cisterna, January 30 to February 1, 1944, in which Company B was, by the HistoryNet account of the later Holtzwihr battle, “decimated.” The Anzio beachhead had become a siege, with Allied forces pressed against the sea and unable to break out for months.
A documented action from the Anzio period: after artillery had disabled a German tank and killed its crew, Murphy crawled toward the tank and used rifle grenades to destroy it, preventing the crew’s potential recovery or the tank’s potential use. This action earned the Bronze Star with “V” device on March 2, 1944. An Oak Leaf Cluster was later added to this award.
The fighting at Anzio was characterized by the specific misery of extended siege — constant artillery, limited movement, the psychological pressure of being trapped in a contested position for months. Rome was not liberated until June 4, 1944. By the time the Fifth Army entered Rome, Murphy had been in continuous or near-continuous combat for nearly a year.
## Southern France: Operation Dragoon and the DSC
The Allied landings in southern France, Operation Dragoon, began on August 15, 1944, with American and French forces coming ashore along the Mediterranean coast between Toulon and Cannes. Murphy’s company landed at Yellow Beach near Ramatuelle.