Like most news junkies, I spent a good deal of last Saturday morning watching coverage of the US-led attacks on Iran on the various news networks. In describing the military build-up, one of the graphics outlined the positioning of US Navy ships in the Arabian Sea and I was intrigued to find that one of the ships was named the USS Michael Murphy.
With a name like that I assumed there had to be an Irish connection and so some research led me to the story of Lieut Michael P Murphy, a Navy Seal who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005.
Murphy was born in Smithtown, New York in 1976 to Irish-American parents Dan and Maureen. His father Dan had also been in the US military and served in the Vietnam War before going on to become the assistant district attorney for Suffolk County.
On graduating from high school Murphy was accepted into Penn State University where he studied psychology and political science. After he completed his college education Murphy looked set to follow in his father’s legal footsteps and was accepted into several law schools.
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However, he decided against going down that route, instead favouring a career in the US Navy and in September 2000 he was accepted into the Navy’s Officer Candidate School at Pensacola, Florida. Taking his place in the school, he could hardly have guessed at the events that would take place the following September on 9/11.
The attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington would put the US into military action in Afghanistan as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda got under way.
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Having completed officer’s school, Murphy then set his sights on becoming a Navy Seal. After completing the various training and selection courses, Murphy earned his Navy SealTrident insignia in 2002 and was posted to Seal team one where he served in Jordan, Qatar and Djibouti.
The ongoing action against the Taliban, saw Murphy deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 where he took part in Operation Redwings, a counterinsurgent mission to find the militia commander Ahmad Shah.
Murphy was the officer-in-charge of a four-man Seal team operating deep inside enemy territory in the Hindu Kush region when his group was discovered by local goat herders who immediately reported their presence to the Taliban militia.
A fierce gunfight ensued with the Seal team greatly outnumbered. Realising that reinforcements were necessary, Murphy moved out from his protective cover to get a better signal on the radio in order to contact headquarters.
While doing so he came under intense fire and was mortally wounded. Unfortunately, the reinforcements arriving in a Chinook helicopter were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade killing all 16 soldiers on board. Only one of the team, Marcus Luttrell, managed to survive and having been given shelter by an Afghan villager was eventually rescued by US forces. The story is recounted in Lutrell’s New York Times bestselling book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10 and the film Lone Survivor starring Mark Wahlberg and Taylor Kitsch, who plays Murphy.
For his heroic efforts, Murphy was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honour, the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. He is one of a surprisingly significant number of Irish Americans to be awarded this prestigious honour.
Murphy was buried in Calverton National Cemetery close to his childhood home in New York. Since his death, a Navy Seal museum named in his honour has been opened on Long Island and in 2011 the US Navy christened their ship, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, after Murphy. The ship was commissioned into service in New York in 2012.
Arleigh Burke himself was an admiral in the US Navy who served during the second World War and the Korean War. Despite his Irish surname, he was the grandson of a Swedish immigrant who changed his name to Burke to sound more American.
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The Irish naval service has traditionally named its fleet after famous women from Irish and Celtic mythology and famous Irish writers: Joyce, Beckett, Shaw and Yeats.
Of those only Beckett was involved in any wartime activity while operating with the French Resistance in the second World War for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Resistance Medal by the French government after the war.
One of the Irish Free State’s first naval vessels was the PV Muirchú, which means “Hound of the Sea” and from which the Irish for Murphy, Ó Murchú is derived.
The State bought the vessel from the Royal Navy in 1923. In its previous existence, it was the HMY Helga and had been used in the shelling of Dublin during Easter week, 1916.
