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"Bring up the PIAT!" is one of the most quoted lines in any war film, from the 1977 Arnhem epic A Bridge Too Far. It's shouted as the paratroopers at Arnhem road bridge face German armour closing in.

The real story behind it is even better. In September 1944, during Operation Market Garden, Lt Col John Frost's 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, with other men of the 1st Airborne Division, seized the north end of the Arnhem road bridge. They held it for three days and four nights against SS armour and infantry, far longer than they had ever been expected to hold out alone. Their anti-tank weapons were 6-pounder guns, grenades and the PIAT.

The PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) was the British infantryman's answer to enemy tanks. It was a heavy, spring-powered spigot launcher, notoriously hard to cock and with a brutal kick, and it took real nerve to use at close range. At Arnhem and Oosterbeek, airborne soldiers used it against tanks and self-propelled guns, including Major Robert Cain, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for repeatedly taking on German armour with a PIAT.

I didn't choose the StuG life. The StuG life chose me.

No turret, no problem. This heavyweight cotton t-shirt is for everyone who has ever defended the humble assault gun in a tank argument.

The Sturmgeschütz III was built on the chassis of the Panzer III. It had no turret, and its gun was mounted in a low, fixed armoured casemate. It started the war as an infantry support assault gun with a short 75 mm gun. Once it was fitted with the long 7.5 cm StuK 40, it became one of the most effective tank destroyers of the war. It kept a low profile long before that was fashionable: hard to spot, hard to hit, and deadly in defence.

Around 10,000 were built, making it Germany's most-produced fully tracked armoured vehicle of WW2. StuGs fought on every front, from the Eastern Front to Italy and Normandy. Unusually, they were crewed by the artillery, not the panzer arm, so the StuG life really was its own thing. After the war, StuGs served on with Finland and other armies for years.

1942 was the Sherman's year. Production began in early 1942, and by October the first Shermans were in action with the British Eighth Army at El Alamein. The name itself was British: the British named their American-built tanks after US Civil War generals, and the M4 became the Sherman, after General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Around 49,000 Shermans were built, more than any other American tank of the war. They served with American, British, Commonwealth, Free French, Polish and Soviet forces. It was reliable, easy to maintain and built in vast numbers, which made it a war-winner through sheer availability. It fought in North Africa, Italy, Normandy and across northwest Europe, and the British Sherman Firefly, with its powerful 17-pounder gun, gave Allied tank crews a real answer to the Tiger and Panther.