The directive took Staff Sergeant Lafayette G. Pool aback. For weeks, his olive-drab Sherman M4A1 medium tank, its sides painted in white block letters with the name In the Mood, had been in the lead position—the spearheader—for the 3rd Armored Division. But orders were orders.
They came from a fellow Texan, an equally bold man whom Pool respected, Lieutenant Colonel Walter B. Richardson, the commander of the 3rd Armored Division task force to which Pool’s battalion belonged.
“No spearheading today, Pool,” Richardson announced. It was September 19, 1944. The first rays of sunlight began to illuminate the silhouettes of dozens of tanks clustered in his bivouac area near Aachen, in western Germany. “You guys are heroes, and I want you going home to mama safe and sound. You take the flank.”
Pool, a powerful man of six foot two with dark brown hair and sloping shoulders, looked hurt. Since his 32nd Armored Regiment had come ashore on the beaches of Normandy in late June, his tank crew had proven themselves time and again. By late that year the U.S.
Army would conservatively credit In the Mood’s crew with the destruction of at least 275 enemy vehicles (including at least six German tanks), 250 enemy soldiers captured, and some 1,000 enemy soldiers killed or captured. In the three-day span of August 29 to 31 alone, they had been credited with the destruction of four German tanks, three antitank guns, and approximately 50 armored vehicles.
Senior officers were already in the process of writing up Pool for the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest military honor. Pool wondered momentarily what compelled his superior to hold them back now as they pushed into Germany.
Then Richardson explained. America needed heroes back home to support the war effort. Pool and his four-man crew fit the bill. He was a bona fide tanker ace, and his crew’s reign of destruction exceeded that of any other five-man group in the 3rd Armored. Classified as a “heavy” division because of its large size and nicknamed the “Spearhead” Division, the 3rd Armored would see extensive action throughout Europe. Plans had been drawn up to ship In the Mood’s crew back home around the first of October to conduct a
