Army & Navy – HEROES: Sergeant Snuffy

You would never think, to look at him, that solemn-faced Staff Sergeant Maynard H. Smith is a dashing soldier, an intrepid airman. He is a calm, unimpressive man who stands five feet four. In civilian life he worked variously as an income-tax field agent and an assistant receiver for the Michigan State Banking Commission.

In the Air Forces his diminutive stature made him a natural for gunner in the cramped ball turret suspended from the belly of a 6-17 Flying Fortress. His nickname was “Snuffy.”

On May 1, during a raid on the Nazi U-boat pens at St.-Nazaire, his bomber. Fortress 649, was badly hit and burst into flame. The fire sweeping the fuselage drove the radio operator and both waist gunners to “bail out. Emerging from his turret, Snuffy cast aside his own parachute, tackled the fire with extinguishers and water bottles. When he had used them up, he beat out the last flames with his hands. Meantime, he had contrived to man both waist guns in turn, helped to beat off harrying Focke-Wulfs and given first aid to the wounded tail gunner.

Last week Sergeant Snuffy carefully peeled the last potato of a stretch on K.P. (a familiar penalty for his habit of overstaying leave), then climbed into his best uniform, went out to the windswept airdrome, stood at deadpan attention while War Secretary Henry L. Stimson read the citation and pinned around his neck the blue ribbon and golden star of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Sergeant Snuffy was the second soldier in the European Theater of Operations to receive the nation’s highest award,* the first live man to wear it.

* The first, a flyer, has not been announced.