The tank destroyer was slowly being engulfed in flames, but Murphy saw that its. “Just hold the phone and I’ll let you talk to one of the bastards!” he yelled back. Over the radio, he could hear the artillery commander asking how close the Germans were to his position. After emptying his M-1 carbine at the enemy, Murphy grabbed his field telephone and took cover atop the burning tank destroyer. Murphy’s command post was collapsing before his eyes, but he held his ground and continued calling in the Allied artillery. In seconds, a curtain of friendly fire rained down between him and the advancing German infantry, pitting the open field with craters and shrouding everything in a haze of smoke. One shell immediately drilled a tree near a machine gun nest and showered its crew with deadly splinters of wood another hit a nearby tank destroyer and set it ablaze. He had just enough time to radio in his coordinates before salvos of German tank fire erupted around him.

As they ran for cover, he stayed behind and used his field telephone to call in an artillery strike. Murphy knew that his men stood no chance against so large a force, so he instructed most of them to withdraw to pre-prepared defensive positions along a nearby tree line. The job is directly before us: destroy and survive.” “The nerves will relax,” he later wrote, “the heart, stop its thumping. Once the shooting began, he knew his instincts would take over. At just 19 years old, the baby-faced Texan had already won two Silver Stars and the Distinguished Service Cross, and he was leading men 10 years his senior into battle. It was a familiar feeling, one he’d learned to control during 18 months of bitter fighting across Italy and France. In the distance, some 250 German troops and six tanks emerged from the woods.Īs he watched the Germans line up for an attack, Murphy felt a wave of panic rise in his belly. Just after 2 p.m., the winter stillness was suddenly broken by the thunderclap of an enemy artillery barrage. The battle-weary soldiers had been ordered to hold a vital roadway until reinforcements arrived, but the operation was delayed and the promised relief was nowhere to be seen. troops sat shivering in a frigid, snow-covered clearing near the Alsatian town of Holtzwihr. On January 26, 1945, Audie Murphy and some 40 U.S.

Personal stories of tank battles wwii