Murphy's Law

We know Murphy's Law. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy, as it turns out, was an Air Force captain. He was working on a project testing the amount of acceleration a human body could take. But a technician with a 50/50 chance of getting the accelerometers glued on correctly got them all wrong and the test was a bust.

It's Memorial Day, a day we honor those fallen in fighting for our country. So I thought you'd like to meet another Murphy or two.

Take, for instance, Lieutenant Michael Murphy. Lt. Murphy was a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan in 2005. He was leading a four-man team searching for a key Taliban leader in the mountains of Afghanistan. The team encountered three Afghan goat herders. Now they had a dilemma. Do they let them go and risk discovery or do they shoot them and be safe? The team let them go. As a result, they found themselves facing 30 to 40 Taliban fighters. The four put up a fight although each was injured. Murphy decided that they needed to call for help, but their location provided no signal, so he had to move away from the protection and out into the open. Without hesitating, and bleeding from a stomach wound, he went out to make the call. He was shot in the back and dropped the handset, but retrieved it and contacted his superiors to get help. Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, a witness to his bravery, said, "I looked back up at Mikey and he took two rounds to the back and sat back up, hung up the phone." Murphy continued to fire until three of the four were killed. Luttrell alone survived the attack after being blown off the edge of the ridge by a grenade and captured, but the Army reconnaissance team sent to recover the SEAL team rescued him, and Lt. Michael Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor for "extraordinary heroism in the face of grave danger." "By his selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty, Lieutenant Murphy reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." At the presentation of the medal President Bush said, "With this medal, we acknowledge a debt that will not diminish with time and can never be repaid."

Another Murphy you might like to hear about is Frederick C. Murphy. PFC Murphy was a medic at the Siegfried Line in 1945. During the fighting, Murphy was shot in the shoulder. Refusing treatment, he continued to treat injured soldiers amid machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire. The company ran into a minefield, but Murphy moved in to help those injured in the field. Eventually, of course, it got the best of him and he stepped on a mine that blew off one of his feet. Refusing to be evacuated, he crawled from man to man giving aid until he crawled across another mine and was killed. At the cost of his own life, PFC Frederick Murphy saved the lives of many soldiers.

Or how about a famous Murphy? Audie Murphy tried to join the military in 1941 at the age of 17. Turned down because he was too young and too small, he finally got into the Army. He had to fight the system to get into combat, but he eventually took part in the invasion of Italy where he distinguished himself repeatedly. Despite bouts of malaria, he fought hard and earned promotions and decorations. Then his division was moved to southern France. Murphy earned the Distinguished Service Cross one day when his good friend was fooled by a German soldier pretending to surrender and was killed. Murphy was so mad he killed everyone in the machine-gun nest that had killed his friend, then took their machine gun and destroyed several other enemy locations. But Murphy wasn't done there. The next day his unit fought in 2 feet of snow against overwhelming odds. With more than 100 of his 128-man unit killed, he ordered the remaining 18 to safety while he covered their retreat. Alone and surrounded on three sides, he faced 6 German tanks and an entire German company. He called in artillery fire and, when he ran out of ammunition, got onto a burning tank destroyer to use its .50 caliber machine gun. He continued to call in artillery and fight off enemy troops while being wounded himself for almost an hour until the phone line was cut by enemy fire. Then the 18 returned and he organized them into a counter attack which drove the remaining Germans from the battle. His citation concluded, "2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective."

We have a rich heritage of people who have fought and fought bravely for freedom. And although Murphy's Law may be that what can go wrong will go wrong, sometimes "Murphy" might just mean that someone was extraordinarily brave in the face of great hardship for the sake of his country.