What happened shortly after the landing produced one of the most dramatic documented actions of Murphy’s service and the action for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross.
His closest friend in the Army, Lattie Tipton, was killed. By multiple accounts, the German position from which the fire that killed Tipton had come was a farmhouse. Murphy advanced alone on that position, attacking the house and its outbuildings in a sustained engagement that lasted roughly an hour. When it was over, he had killed eight German soldiers, wounded three, and captured eleven.
The specific emotional dynamic of this action — a soldier reacting to the death of a friend — is part of the account as Murphy himself later described it. The citation recognizes the action’s military effect: a defended position was eliminated. What drove the action, the accounts agree, was the death of Tipton. Murphy’s later statement about the Holtzwihr action — “They were killing my friends” — the most direct explanation he offered for his actions that day — echoes this earlier experience.
The Allied advance up the Rhône Valley followed: the 3rd Division fought at Montélimar and pushed north through France. At Genevreuille on September 15, 1944, a mortar shell killed two of Murphy’s men and wounded three others. Murphy received a heel wound and his first Purple Heart.
At L’Omet quarry on October 2, Murphy advanced alone to within fifteen yards of a German machine-gun nest, threw two grenades, killed four German soldiers, and wounded three. The Silver Star.
Three days later, on October 5, in the same area, Murphy carried a small radio to within two hundred yards of enemy positions, relaying artillery firing orders for an hour while under direct fire. This earned an Oak Leaf Cluster to the Silver Star — his second Silver Star action.