Who repairs wins: Tank mechanics sneak behind enemy lines

It sounds like a script taken straight from the Commando comics, but this Sunday Post story on December 27, 1942 is no work of fiction.

“They Worked Three Nights Behind German Lines,” read the headline. “An American repair party, protected by a British patrol of Guardsmen, worked for three nights behind the enemy’s lines on American armoured vehicles left stranded

there,” it continued.

“All the vehicles were retrieved. “The joint force approached the spot under cover and in silence and worked without lights.

“The first night an American reconnaissance party went out to make sure the Germans had not wrecked the vehicles or set booby traps.

“The next night the Americans, with the same British patrol, went back. To imaginations strung up, every tap of the hammer,

every ring of steel against steel in the sinister silence, seemed magnified and certain to evoke German machine-gun fire. But nothing happened.

“As dawn drew near, it was obvious the repairs could not be completed that night. ‘ The first night we felt a little jumpy,’ said the American lieutenant commanding the repair party. ‘ The second night wasn’t so bad, but we had a feeling the Germans might be waiting for us the third night. However, the vehicles were almost ready and we meant to get them.

“So off we went a third night. We could not have gone at all if it had not been for British protection. I had heard a lot about the reputation of your crack Guards regiments. Now I know how they got it.

“Our boys have something to learn from soldiers like that. We had an American patrol also one night, but now and then you could see and hear them.

“Next night they had learned their lesson from the British Guards, and they too, were invisible and inaudible.’”