Yeah, one of us was obviously confused. They never told us anything more than they thought we needed to know beyond our own regt, 7th Army, and "V Corps". I never knew what units were behind us, but there was nobody in front of us (except those Other fellas in the T-62s). And that was 45 years ago. This thread just dredged up that old memory. Certainly to the rest of the crew that TC seemed really old--he must've been about 45! That would've made him 25 in 1945. When he retired we all moved up a notch and got a newbie (trained as a combat engineer!) as a loader. It took me all summer to teach him how to keep that accursed coax firing.
Crazy choice for most survivable tank here. The french Char bis 1, during the battle for stonne in may 1940, a char bis 1 took something like 140 separate hits in a single engagement and was still fighting