After Holtzwihr, Murphy continued to serve. He was with the 3rd Division through the Rhine crossing and the advance into Germany and Austria. He was there for the German surrender in May 1945. He was promoted to first lieutenant before his discharge in September 1945. The three-year arc from Camp Wolters to Austria is a continuous story of a person developing and deploying a specific set of skills under conditions of extreme pressure.
The arc does not end at September 1945. It continues through the Hollywood years, the memoir, the advocacy, the struggles. But the military arc — the specific story of a soldier — runs from June 1942 to September 1945, and within that arc, Holtzwihr on January 26, 1945, is the point of maximum intensity.
## The Counterattack as the Final Act
Murphy’s decision to lead a counterattack with eighteen men after the defensive stand on the burning M10 is the final military act of the January 26 action, and it deserves attention as a specific decision rather than an epilogue.
He had just spent approximately an hour on a burning vehicle, under fire from six tanks and 250 infantry, with an 88mm shell having already killed the commanders of one of the two M10s that were supposed to be supporting him. He was wounded in the leg. The field phone had gone dead. He was out of ammunition.
He walked back to his eighteen men.
He did not ask them to hold their position while he sought medical attention. He did not consolidate in the forest and wait for reinforcement. He organized his eighteen men and led them in a counterattack that restored Company B’s original forward positions at the south edge of the forest.