The Staff Sergeant called himself the Polock but everybody else called him Sarge. He was kind of a burly guy. He was my height but he weighed a lot more than I did - probably about 220-230. He asked me what I had done and I said, “Actually I’m a language translator, and I’ve just been following orders. They say go here and go there and I just do as I’m told.”

He asked, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“I was told to come here.”

“Well, you do drive, don’t you?”

“I’ve driven an M3.”

He said, “They’re not used anymore, we now use M4 Shermans but here we’re using M8s.”

We went over to the M8 and climbed in. He sat in the radioman’s seat and said, “Okay, show me.” I remembered how to start it and I started to pump it. He said, “You don’t have to pump it, it’s been running.”

I started it up and remembered that the gear shift is backwards so I put it over and he said, “I see you’ve driven it before.” I knew immediately I was right. I started off and it was a little bumpy at first.

I said, “I’m rusty, I haven’t driven for a long time.”

He said, “That’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

We drove on and, when I shifted from first to second, I double-clutched. He blew up and said, “You don’t double-clutch these damn things. The clutch dies fast enough on its own. You drive it like a car.”

I said, “I’m sorry sergeant, that’s the way they taught me.”

He asked where they taught me and I told him on maneuvers in North Carolina in 1942. He said, “You’ve been in the army that long? You don’t look that old.”

“I’m not, I was an army dependent but I used to hang out in the Motor Pool. I got to drive everything they had, but mostly I enjoyed the tanks.”

“Oh, we got an army brat here. Well, we’re going to teach you how to drive like a real soldier.”

What an experience that was, but he was good. He made me drive the M8 backwards. An M8 is sort of like a tank. When you’re in friendly territory, there’s a little flap you can open up so you can get a pretty good view of the road ahead of you; but you can’t see to either side or the back.

The vehicle commander, who sits up there in the turret, tells you what to do and so Sarge wiggled his way up. There isn’t a lot of room in these things, but he wiggled his way up so he could poke his head out the turret. He was telling me “a little to the right” or “a little way to the left”, etc. At first I was afraid I was going to wreck the thing but he said, “Come on, get with it!” He pushed me a little faster, then a little faster. You only have two reverse gears – the low range and the high range. We were doing everything in high range but, even then, you can't really go very fast. It just seemed like it. I got so I could follow his directions pretty well. He said, “Okay, you’ll do. Do you know why you have to know how to drive in reverse?”

"No sir."

"Because you never show the hind end to the Krauts or they'll drop you dead in your tracks."

I was really going to like this guy! I guess my big relief was I would rather drive anything than walk. So that’s what I did for the most part. We did a lot of walking, but we were primarily in the vehicle.

(click on above thumb nail to view larger photo of M-8)