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On April 11th, 1945, at 8:00am, Lieutenant Mark Larkin, "B" Company, 702nd Tank Battalion was killed in action, while scouting out a reported enemy machine gun nest, that had members of the 318th Infantry pinned down.  The tank was unwittingly led into a German ambush, by an infantry officer of the 318th.  The late Jim Hardy, Secretary/Treasurer of the 702nd Tank Battalion Red Devils Association, was the driver of that ill-fated tank.  Mr. Hardy was one of the toughest men that it has been this writer's pleasure to meet.  In spite of his toughness, it still brought Jim to tears, to tell about Lt. Larkin, over forty-five years after the fact.  Although Jim seemed to think that it was a ground-mount anti-tank gun, that hit his tank, from the S-2 Journal entry, it is more likely that it was a German 75mm S.P. gun.  The following is Jim's account of the platoon leader that he came to love like a brother, and the 702nd in general:

"I remember when Lt. Larkin came over to "B" Company from "A" Company, he had made a battlefield commission, and came over to us as a second lieutenant.  We didn't know what to expect.  We hadn't had any dealings with him before that.  He turned out to be the best we ever had, as far as I'm concerned.  He came to "B" Company right after the Battle of the Bulge, in about the middle of January, I'd say.  He shared everything he had with his crew, including his whisky rations.  It was "all of ours" then.  That was rare among officers.  He had often talked about taking us back to his home, on Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, New York.  He wanted to show us the town.

It was in the morning, and we were supposed to be clearing out some woods where there was supposed to be infantry pinned down by machine guns.  We didn't get but a couple of hundred yards from the woods, when an anti-tank gun hit us.  I don't remember, but I think that it was a ground-mount, but it hit us three times.  I think that it was probably a 75mm, because it glanced off of both places that it hit us, and then glanced off of us on the tank commander's ring and then that is what hit Larkin in the face.  He didn't even know what hit him.  The only other person who got hurt in the tank was me, I went crazy.  We had an extra infantry guy in there with us, who was supposed to show us where this machine gun was supposed to be.  We never did see no machine gun, and I never did see that infantryman afterwards.  I got the tank back.  Everybody else had left, but me.  Bill Crone was the gunner.  Nortavage had went up as the assistant driver.  We had liberated these nice leather jackets off the Germans, and I had Larkin all over my back.  That's when I went berserk.  They took me down to a house and told me to stay there.  The colonel [Col. Wm. B. Miller, then Capt. Miller, C.O. of B Co.] came and brought me another bottle [Jim's second bottle of whisky], so that fixed it.  He told me to take it easy, and that he liked him [Larkin] too.  It didn't do much damage to the tank.  It just splattered it up on the inside.  They had to replace the tank commander's ring, up top.  We had it back in action in the next day or so.

I met his wife at the Florida Reunion.  I also met his daughter, and I sent his grandson one of our jackets.  Meeting his wife was a emotional experience for me.  She gave me his photo.  I remember that once, I was going to whip a sergeant for him, and he was going to whip a lieutenant for me.  We were relieving part of the 4th Armored Division, and this joker wouldn't move his half-track.  I had to deck him.  Then their company commander came around, and Larkin handled him.  That lieutenant was in our "A" Company in the States.  Larkin told him, "You weren't any good back then, and you're not any damned good now, either!"  As for the Red Devils Association, I just hope that we can stick together, because that's what this is all about!