Dustin Waters🇨🇦

When Lt-Col. H. P. Bell-Irving returned to command the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada in the autumn of 1944, he brought an idea with him. On the San Fortunato ridge in September he had watched men of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment knock out several heavy German tanks with anti-tank mines and the PIAT. Bell-Irving wanted the PIAT used to hunt. It was not a popular weapon. The PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) was a spring-loaded spigot launcher that threw a hollow-charge bomb of about two and a half pounds. To cock it, a man had to stand on the weapon and heave on the shoulder piece. It was reliable against the side or rear of a tank at a hundred yards or less, and of little use beyond that. Using it against a Panther meant letting the tank come very close, in full view of its machine guns and the infantry riding on it. At Riccione, the Seaforths formed a tank-hunting platoon under Lt. F. H. Harfield, drawn from the anti-tank platoon: an officer, a sergeant, a corporal and 14 others. Eight men formed four two-man PIAT crews. The other six carried No. 75 “Hawkins” grenades and Tommy guns. The drill was simple. Mines laid across a road would break a tank’s tracks. Once it was stopped, a PIAT crew would knock it out at short range, and the Tommy gunners would deal with the crew and any infantry riding on it. One of the men picked for the platoon was a private who had been with the battalion since 1940 and had been promoted to corporal, and reduced again, nine times. His name was Ernest “Smokey” Smith. Within weeks, the drill would be tested on a dark road beside a church on the far side of a river no tank could cross.