Tanks for the Memory

In the article by Times writer Ronald B. Taylor (“Top Tank,” June 8), Taylor mentioned a Lt. Gen. William Desobry as a World War II tanker who later helped design the U.S. Army’s new M-1A1 tank.

As a U.S. Army Infantryman with the 106th “Golden Lion” division during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, I was hit in the right side by a rifle bullet and taken prisoner by the German Army. While standing on a railroad station platform just south of Cologne, Germany, on Dec. 19, 1944, I met a tall American officer who had a white bandage wound over both eyes and around his head. During our brief conversation about Hawaii and Bing Crosby, he mentioned that he had been hit in the head by a German tank shell and was possibly blinded. Afterward, we went our separate ways.

Some 40 years later, I happened to read U.S. Army military historian Charles B. MacDonald’s new book Called “A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge” that the officer was (Desobry), the same William Desobry described in your current article as the designer of the new American M-1A1 tank.

KENNETH LLOYD LARSON

Los Angeles