Murphy took advantage of the unexpected lull to begin forming his lines, using one tank destroyer and five armored vehicles from the 3rd Reconnaissance Troop to protect his right flank. Company A connected loosely with his left flank. The second tank destroyer selected a position approximately 40 yards ahead of the lines. Murphy then set up his command post in a drainage ditch 10 yards in front of the rear tank destroyer. He maintained contact with battalion headquarters, a mile to the rear, by a field phone.

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Company B was stretched across a butt-end of a large `U’ whose sides were formed by two great fingers of trees that led toward Holtzwihr, Murphy recalled. The heavily fortified village was now in plain view over the rolling, snow-covered fields. The two tank destroyers sat astraddle a narrow dirt road that ran deep into the woods. Murphy knew German armor would have to advance along the roadway. Early in the afternoon, he phoned back to 1st Battalion headquarters for last-minute instructions. He was informed that the 2nd Battalion, 30th Regiment, had not yet arrived to reinforce his company. Hold your position were his orders.

At 1400 hours on January 26, 1945, German armor and infantry moved out from Holtzwihr, preceded by an artillery barrage. From my forward shallow emplacement I saw the counterattack forming with six tanks and about 250 foot soldiers garbed in white suits, Murphy recalled, so it would’ve been impossible to spot them sooner or any farther away than a mile. I alerted the men and ran for the field phone and called the artillery officer at battalion headquarters and arranged for 2nd Battalion to fire. I no sooner gave the order to fire than all hell broke loose. The Germans had started their preliminary barrage. Private First Class Donald Eckman remembered: You could see the pennants on the antenna of the German tanks….That got our attention right away….We also saw a huge sea of white infantry coming toward us.

The infantry belonged to the German 2nd Mountain Division, which had been transferred to the Colmar region from Norway. The men had been trained for operations in mountainous terrain. Individual companies of this division were brought down from Norway and fed into the lines as soon as they arrived. By committing this elite division to action at Holtzwihr, the German commanders demonstrated how vital they believed it was to hold a bridgehead west of the Rhine.

The German tactical objective was to gain control of the road that led from Holtzwihr through Murphy’s position and into the woods beyond the regimental headquarters. If successful, the enemy attack would clearly threaten the 3rd Division’s entire position. Murphy recognized the importance of holding the road at all costs.

Once the enemy came within range, Tardy’s tank destroyers opened fire. Unfortunately, their 90mm shells bounced harmlessly off the steel sides of the oncoming German armor. I saw the enemy tanks get direct hits, said Murphy, but the rounds proved ineffective against the heavily armored German tanks. Advancing and firing viciously, they knocked out a Company B machine-gun crew. Then the rear tank destroyer was hit by an 88mm shell that pierced its thin armor and killed the commander and gunner. The surviving crew members scurried out and retreated into the woods.

Undaunted, the crew in the lead tank destroyer, after surviving several close calls, mounted an attack on its own. Staff Sergeant Joseph Tardiff and Corporal Robert Hines simultaneously blazed away with .50- and .30-caliber machine guns, cutting down the oncoming enemy infantrymen. Suddenly, however, the crew lost control of the tank destroyer when they tried to maneuver into a better firing position. The vehicle slid off the road and into a drainage ditch, leaving its main gun at a useless angle that prevented it from being trained on the enemy. Stuck fast in the ditch, the tank destroyer became a sitting duck for German fire. The crew climbed out and hastily retreated to the forest.

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