Back in 1998 I had the opportunity to talk to a man named Fred Schmid (he emphasized at the time that there was no 't' at the end).
He said at the time that he was then 72, and that he had joined the Wehrmacht at age 17 because his older brother had been killed in a train wreck on his way to start his enlistment. He said he was assigned to a tank on the Russian Front. He said he became a tank commander at age 18 when his commander was killed by a Russian bomber while he was outside the tank relieving himself, and he was the only crew member who could read and write properly, so his fellow tankers elected him leader. They were having a hard time getting replacements in 1944.
Was any of his story true? I don't know, but it was a good story.
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“Never do anything you can't take back.”
—Rocky Russo
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