“You spin around in your own length. It’s astonishing how fast those
little tanks can turn when they have to. Fast enough to cut a man in
two if he’s in the way. Yes, it happened more than once. Some Boches
had an idea they could do something to a Renault with a hand grenade
and tried it at close quarters. Might just as well have thrown eggs
at us, unless some splinters got in the slits. And if they were close
enough and we whirled her round they were out of luck sure—broken legs,
you know, or mashed ribs.
“No, the Boche anti-tank gun never hurt us to amount to anything. Ever
see one? It weighs about 50 pounds and shoots a whale of a bullet,
but unless it strikes sharp at right angles it doesn’t go through.
Pretty hard steel, you know, that tank armor. What did stop us, when we
were stopped, was the 77. Even that took a direct hit. A 77 could go
off right beside us and we’d hardly know it. But if it made a direct
hit—well, you don’t expect to run a war without any casualties, of
course. I recall one case where a 77 made a hit and set off all the
ammunition in the tank. The tank was scrap steel and the men—well, we
found a hand, and a shoe. Just literally blown to nothing.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly._