The Russ Heath cover for G.I. Combat #121 (December 1966-January 1967) is magnificent and does depict a scene from the story accurately, but it does not hint at the main plot twist. That plot twist being the Haunted Tank travels backwards in time!
The story, written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Russ Heath, begins in a standard enough manner--with the Germans trying to kill Jeb Stuart and his crew. After a close call battling a German fighter, things get mildly odd when a confused pigeon lands on the tank.
Slim, the driver, makes the unwise decision of allowing an animal that is famous for not being house-broken nest in his helmet. We never see the consequences of this, though, so I guess it worked out.
Anyway, the ghost of General Stuart appears to say the pigeon is going to be responsible for them fighting in two wars. It's a different sort of warning than Jeb normally gets from his ghostly mentor. It's not a cryptic warning that will save their lives later on. Instead, its merely a prediction of what will happen. And it's not quite accurate--the pigeon doesn't seem to be responsible for their eventually side trip to World War I. It does lead the tank back to World War 2, so it does have a key role in the story.
That last paragraph seems nitpicky. This is a fun story highlighted by Heath's typically magnificent art.
Anyway, a little later, the Haunted Tank blasts a German tank off a cliff. To avoid the 60-ton monster from landing on them, the small tank drives into a cave. The German tank crashes down outside the entrance, trapping them in the cave.
It's a large cave, though, and there's a number of tunnels leading out of it. They try one at random and find themselves on a World War I battlefield!
I love how nonchalant Jeb is about this. He deduces that they apparently gone through a time warp in the cave and then just goes with it. We get no indication of what the rest of the crew thought. Maybe they were busy cleaning bird poop out of Slim's helmet.
The American troops are pinned down by early model German tanks. The leader of the Americans is a double for Sgt. Rock. Jeb deduces that this is Rock's dad.
The Haunted Tank takes out one of the German tanks and WWI-Rock leads his troops on a charge to destroy the other enemy tank. He uses a tactic his son will often employ, crawling onto the tank and spraying gunfire through view ports until ammunition is touched off.
Having saved the WWI-era Americans, Jeb takes the tank back into the cave tunnels to hopefully find a way back to World War II. It's here the pigeon takes a role, leading them through the right tunnel and getting them home.
They almost get nailed by another Tiger tank, but WWI-era Rock and his troops show up to save them.
WW1-Rock heads back to his own time and has some interesting stories to eventually tell his son. Jeb and his crew return to their war--once again very blase about having just traveled through time. Of course, Jeb regularly talks to a ghost, so perhaps he's just gotten used to the unusual.
This really is a good story. Heath's art is especially noteworthy in the large panel depicted a First World War battle, but its... well... magnificent from start to finish. (It is very difficult to talk about Heath's work without regularly repeating the word "magnificent.") And the story itself takes a bizarre but fun concept and runs with it, without worrying about detailed explanations or rigid story logic.
Next week, we'll stay in the DC Silver Age as we visit Hawkman.
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