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Another River, Another Town

a Teenage Tank Gunner Comes of Age in Combat, 1945
Dec 29, 2013
Another River, Another Town, by John P. Irwin John Irwin left high school in Pennsylvania to spend what would have been his senior year fighting the Nazis (although it could have been the Japanese). He had just turned 18. He was trained in tanks and became a tank gunner, the man who fires the large gun on a tank. He made it to the front in March 1945. This is an account of his 2 months in combat. It is told almost 50 years after the fact and following his career as a college philosophy professor. It is clear that his memories, reinforced by a diary, still haunted him to some degree. They included the death of his loader to fragmentation while he took a break on the deck of the tank, the severe burning of the co-driver in an attack by a hand held ?panzerfaust?, his machine gunning of a 12 year old kid that was attacking with a ?panzerfaust? after Irwin?s commander yelled ?kill that kid?, and their liberation of a concentration/slave labor camp at Nordhausen. It was tedious at times, but generally interesting and informative as to what these young men went through.