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Show Most Thrilling Exploit of War Wins High Honor Lone Yank Officer Repulses Tank Attack Led by 250 Germans. WASHINGTON. A young officer who manned a machine gun atop a blazing abandoned tank destroyer and beat back a tank led assault by 250 Germans has been awarded the nation's top decoration. He is First Lt. Audie L. Murphy, 1 21, of Farmersville, Texas, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor near Holtzwihr, France, last January Janu-ary 26. He was still a second lieutenant lieu-tenant and new to the command of his company in the third Infantry division, says the Chicago Tribune. The citation accompanying the medal, which was to be given to Murphy in Europe, credited him with killing or wounding 50 of the Germans with machine gun fire and with directing artillery fire earlier in the fighting which killed "many" more. Some of Murphy's buddies estimated that he accounted for 100 Nazis in the hour-long battle. Swept From Woods. Murphy was In front of his company com-pany when the two German infantry infan-try companies, paced by six heavy tanks, swept from a woods. He ordered or-dered his men to fall back to prepared pre-pared positions while he stayed at his advance post to call for artillery fire to smash the Germans in the open. He was alone except for a tree and the tank destroyer about 10 yards to his right. First Lt. Walter W. Weispfennig, an artillery officer of Fredonia, N. D., who witnessed the action, said later the artillery fire that Murphy directed "had a deadly effect." "I saw Germans disappearing in clouds of dirt and snow," he related. Then a German 88 mm. shell crashed into the tank destroyer and its crew batted out, falling back to join the remainder of the company. Smoke and flames spurted from the destroyer. The German tank crews swung wide around it, fearing that its gasoline and ammunition would blow up. With the German infantry only 100 yards away. Murphy dashed over to the destroyer, climbed into the turret, tur-ret, and began blasting the Nazis with its .50 caliber machine gun. Weispfennig called it the "bravest thing I've ever seen a man do in combat," adding: Exposed to Foe's Fire. "He was completely exposed- to the enemy fire and there was a blaze under him that threatened to blow the destroyer to bits. Machine gun, machine pistol, and 88 shellflre was all around him. "Twice the tank destroyer was hit by direct shellflre and Lieutenant Murphy was engulfed In smoke and flame. His clothing was riddled by flying fragments of shells and bits of rocks. I saw that his trouser leg was soaked with blood." Twelve Germans tried to sneak up along a ditch and flank him but he swung the machine gun and killed all of them at a 50-yard range. The Nazi infantry was stalled. Without the infantry the enemy tanks couldn't advance and the whole attack at-tack collapsed. Murphy dropped wearily off the destroyer, all his ammunition gone, and limped back to his company. Refusing treatment, he reorganized his company and led it in an attack that routed the Germans. Murphy, a native of Farmersville, joined the army on his 18th birthday birth-day and fought throughout the African, Af-rican, Sicilian, Italian and French campaigns. He has been wounded three times and wears the Purple Heart with two clusters. |
