In Normandy in 1944, Sergeant Curtis Culin of the New Jersey National Guard’s 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron is credited with a plow for tanks that cut through the hedgerows. It was made from “iron anti-tank jacks the Nazis had scattered across Normandy’s beaches.” The idea was “thought up by Culin overnight.”
General Omar Bradley saw it work and ordered production. The cutters went on “virtually every tank in the First Army.” In the breakout at St. Lô on July 25, 1944, the tanks “caught the Germans completely by surprise.”