     Their truck had broken down about ten miles from the front and the driver, Joe Repaggio, was scared. He had six wounded men, a dead truck, and a German offensive bearing down on him. His worst fears were realized when he saw a German Panzer IV rumbling down the road towards him. Joe couldn't abandon his wounded; he stood in the road and waved at the tank, hoping it wouldn't blast him. The tank trundled right up to him and the hatch opened.
     "Howdy, I'm Lester. Tom's driving. You guys need a tow?"
     "How'd you guys capture a German tank?"
     "Capture, hell! The krauts left it busted near St. Vith in September; we just got it repaired and now we're taking it back to Corps at Bastogne."
     They rigged a towline and set off. Along the way their German tank scattered three fleeing groups of GIs and set a truck column into a panic. Lester and Tom, unaware of the German attack, couldn't figure out the commotion. They had painted US stars on the tank just like they were supposed to. Joe, steering the towed truck, tried frantically to get them to stop, but his shouting was drowned out in the din. At one point he leaned out the window at a group of GIs cowering in the ditch (having thrown themselves there at the approach of the tank) and apologized.
     Lester was having fun training the big gun on passing targets. Tank repair jocks didn't get much chance to see German stuff. He liked the gun controls and the turret layout, but the engine was, in his words, "fer shit".
     An hour later, as it grew dark, they passed through a German reconnaissance group. Lester waved; somebody in an armored car waved back. Joe scrunched down low in his seat and cursed these two dumb fools.
     They made it all the way to Bastogne.
/Tank repair
     Tanks are unreliable machines. They contain thousands of working parts, the failure of any one of which can turn a tank into an impotent pillbox.
     Tank tracks, the linked steel chains on which tanks ride, are the most vulnerable part. If anything goes wrong with either track, the tank stops cold. If the track becomes loose, a sudden maneuver can throw the track off the sprocket. Track links are easily broken by artillery fire, mines or light anti-tank weapons. And they wear out after about a thousand miles.
     Engines are another failure waiting to happen. Tank engines are of necessity high-performance designs, which tends to make them finnicky. They sometimes won't start in cold weather. In the stress of combat, they overheat easily. And woe betide the tanker who, in the midst of battle, fails to change the oil, clean the filters, or perform any of the other vital bits of routine maintenance.
     Gun systems are another way for a tank to fail. Something so simple and common as a jammed gun can, in the middle of combat, force the crew to abandon the tank. The turret could stick or the hydraulic power could fail.
     For all these reasons, a great many tanks that are lost in combat are easily repaired. While the repairs can't be effected immediately, once the battle moves on, the repair crews can get a great many of the tanks operational in a matter of days. The crucial factor is possession of the battlefield. Whoever owns the battlefield owns the broken tanks. This is one big advantage of attacking -- the beaten defender loses his damaged tanks./