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Sunday, 24 February 2008 |
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 HEAVY METAL. The code name used by U.S. Army Corporal Sherman R. Guderian. Growing up poor in Brooklyn, New York, Heavy Metal looked for a way to get out of poverty. He enlisted in the Army to go to Finance School, his goal to become a CPA. But after watching a column of tanks roll by at Fort Belvoir, he was never the same again. He transferred to Armor and was trained in the use of the Army's most advanced tanks. He was eventually assigned to the G.I. Joe team to drive the new MBT Mauler tank. On Heavy Metal's last training mission before joining the Joes in the desert outside of Las Vegas, he and several other new recruits led by Lady Jaye were ambushed by a group of Cobra's Battle Android Troopers. The BATs ran straight into the Joe vehicles as they headed down the highway. When they collided, canisters on their backs broke open, releasing Dr. Mindbender's creeper vines. The fast-growing vines clogged the vehicles' wheels and released a sleeping gas that knocked out the Joes. When they awoke they were trapped in a junkyard maze and forced to fight more BATs and the vines. Heavy Metal and the others eventually found a way to defeat the vines without weapons and sent Cobra into retreat. Heavy Metal and the Mauler later participated in the Battle of Springfield, when nearly the entire Joe team invaded the Cobra-controlled town. Upon returning from that mission, the Joes discovered that their prisoner, Zartan, had escaped with the help of the Dreadnoks. Heavy Metal and other Joes tracked them to the New Jersey swamps where they were taken by surprise by the arrival of the Dreadnoks' Thunder Machine, which allowing the mercenaries to escape. Heavy Metal continued his work on the team for years, participating in many missions, including the Joes' involvement in the Cobra Island civil war. Heavy Metal's final mission began as a supposedly simple raid on Cobra Terror-Dromes in the desert nation of Trucial Abysmia. The mission went sour when the Joes stumbled upon a large contingent of Cobra soldiers and vehicles. Heavy Metal's Mauler was one of the vehicles that was destroyed, though all onboard bailed out beforehand. The team was captured and held prisoner by Cobra. A SAW-Viper, misunderstanding orders, killed several of the Joes in cold blood. Heavy Metal was one of the first. He and his fellow Joes were given heroes' funerals in Arlington National Cemetery.
Heavy Metal's file name -- "Sherman Guderian" -- is named for the Sherman tank and the German General Heinz Guderian, famous for leading his tank divisions in the Nazi invasion of Moscow during World War II.
(GI 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 76, 77, 108, 109, SM 24; Figure: 1)
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Classic G.I. Joe Guide 
