>> He was immediately pegged as a tanker when he joined.
Probably because the Army knew those farm boys knew how to drive a tractor cross-country and keep machinery operating.
That is exactly right. He was short as well which was also a bonus for fitting into tanks from that time period.
My wife and I bought a 41 Cadillac in Indianapolis around 15 years ago. We stopped at a rest stop just across the border in Illinois that afternoon. The car was a beauty and drew a crowd. An older man came over to talk to us. My wife told him that her dad was from the area. He asked her his name and where he had lived. She told him Coles County which was about 20 miles away. The man said he was from Coles County as well. When she told him his last name was Swinford, the man immediately lit up. He said that all the Swinfords he knew were all bald short farm boys and he thought that he had known her dad. Her dad was from a family of 13 so it was a little hard for him to say for sure. Some of my wife's uncles were tankers as well and not all of them survived WWII
So we went on a search for traces of her family the next morning but didn't have enough time to find anything other than a farm house or two and noone who had a clue about the people who had lived there in the distant past. We always meant to do more research and return but never did. We just felt very lucky to have run into one person who knew something about her family.