Murphy’s command post was in a drainage ditch ten yards in front of the rear tank destroyer. He maintained contact with 1st Battalion headquarters by field telephone. The 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, had been ordered to arrive as reinforcement but had not come. Murphy’s orders were to hold his position.
## The M10 Tank Destroyer
The vehicle that Murphy would climb onto later that day was an M10, the standard American tank destroyer of the period.
The M10 was based on the M4 Sherman tank chassis but modified for the tank destroyer role: its hull was lighter, it carried a 3-inch (76mm) gun in an open-topped turret, and it was designed to move quickly to intercept and destroy enemy armor. The open-topped turret, while it made the crew more vulnerable to artillery and small arms fire, allowed better observation and faster traversal.
The M10 also carried a .50-caliber M2 heavy machine gun mounted on the rear of the open turret. This was the weapon Murphy would fire from the burning vehicle. The .50-caliber was a crew-served weapon designed for anti-aircraft use and against light armored vehicles and personnel — powerful against infantry, not effective against German medium or heavy tank armor.
The 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion had been fighting in the European theater since North Africa. Its equipment and personnel were experienced in the specific challenges of the tank destroyer role in this theater. That experience did not change the physics of what happened when German 88mm shells engaged the M10s at Holtzwihr.