26. A “Pompous Little Fellow“
His training completed, Maynard Smith got his sergeant’s stripes and was sent to the Eighth Air Force in England. There, he was assigned to the 423rd Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bomb Group. Smith found it hard to fit in. His privileged background set him apart from men hardened by the Great Depression. He was also 31-years-old, significantly older than most of his comrades, and even most of his officers. And he was a small guy, with a chip on his shoulder. As described by Andy Rooney, later famous as a curmudgeonly 60 Minutes commentator but then a 24-year-old Stars and Stripes correspondent, others saw Smith as a: “pompous little fellow with the belligerent attitude of a man trying to make up with attitude what his five-foot-four, 130-pound body left him wanting“.
Since his surname was Smith, and he was a small guy with a bad attitude, other airmen nicknamed him “Snuffy” after the short, ill-tempered, shiftless and thoroughly obnoxious comic strip character Snuffy Smith. For his part, Smith, who had precious few endearing personality traits, was just as snobby as the child of privilege he seemed to many. As he put it, most of his comrades were: “people that I had no interest in but was forced to associate with simply because I was in the army“. Combat would change that plot and how Smith was perceived – at least for a while.