(Another post from back in 2004 when I had, like, fifty readers)

Back in my misspent youth, I was an instructor at the Army’s Armor Training Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was the responsibility of me and the rest of the instructors in training companies like mine to take army recruits fresh out of basic training, ten weeks off the streets, and turn them into entry-level armor crewmen. Back then we trained on the M60A1 Patton tank. This was a decent piece of equipment.

Somewhere around week three of the eight-week training cycle, we started driver training. Each trainee spent a session in a simulator which replicated the sound and layout of a real tank, and then moved to the driver training area for work on a real tank. Here’s where we had fun. Doing things with 54 tons of steel IS fun. A tank will go into some surprising places. Four feet of water? No problem. three feet of mud? No problem. A twelve-inch pine tree? No problem. Four foot deep trench? No problem. Did all that. With a trainee driver.

As you might suspect, the activities of a bunch of young instructors turned loose in several hundred acres of trees and muddy fields provided wherewithal for an occasional mishap. Thrown tracks were fairly common, and always a source for impromptu training. If the thrown track was made known over the company radio net, EVERYBODY showed up, ostensibly to allow the trainees to observe the methods used to induce the tank’s track back into its’ normal position. The REAL reason, though was to poke fun at the unfortunate instructor who let himself get into the fix. Accordingly, a lot of us instructors learned many ways to induce a track back into place without asking for help. Still, if you were there on the ground trying to guide your driver into getting the track back in place and one of the other tanks saw you, the news was out.

Getting stuck was less common, although painfully common enough. Same drill, though. When the poor schmuck called for help on the radio, EVERYBODY showed up, one to pull him out of the hole, and the rest to jeer him on. The most spectacular sticking I witnessed was SGT Williams, who decided his crew was in need of a tree-felling demonstration. Of course, pushing trees over was contrary to regulation, but once you got out in the woods away from the assembly area where the officers and field first sergeant stayed, well, regulations just MIGHT be forgotten for the sake of a learning experience. It was usually done successfully, but Williams chose an oak tree. Oak trees have a large root system extending out horizontally from the trunk. Williams’ driver backed off a distance, lined up on the tree, and was probably doing ten miles an hour when he hit the tree. The tree went over forthwith. The angular relationship between trunk and roots was maintained, and the root ball came up underneath the tank’s hull, effectively jacking both tracks clear off the ground. Result: one tank, high and dry. Pulling him off was easy enough. The incident was subject of much retelling.

All our driver training was done with the turret turned to the rear and the gun in travel lock, a mechanical fastening which prevented the turret from slewing around and protected the delicate linkages of the fire control system. It also protects the gun from young instructor/tank commanders. A tank commander learns to be mindful of the orientation of his gun tube. One young instructor decided to show his trainees the experience of traveling with the turret pointed over the front, but forgot the importance of where the gun tube is pointing. The result? Gun tube over left front fender, too close to clay embankment. Removing ten feet of clay packed into a 105mm gun tube is interesting to watch. And talk about.

Facts stack up in strange ways. Fact 1: There was an escape hatch under the driver seat of the M60A1 tank. Most of us tied the handle closed, since we weren’t expecting to have to evacuate the tank in this manner, and the hatches had a habit of falling out. They weighed a couple of hundred pounds and were a b*tch to get back in place. Fact 2: In the rainy winter weather of Kentucky, if you drive ten tanks over a piece of ground every day for a few weeks, you can create a mirey muck with the consistency of modelling clay. Stack them together: Tank drops escape hatch. Young instructor has trainee crew pick it up and throw it in the storage rack on the rear of the turret with the intent of reinstalling it at lunch. Driver training continues. Tank comes off a little knoll into a ditch full of the afore-mentioned mud. The nose pitches downward. The mud moves, most of it outward, but A BUNCH squirts up through the escape hatch port, into the driver compartment, and surrounds the poor driver. They had to dig him out. He was unhurt, but cold, wet, muddy, and several shades of blue. It took shovels to get the poor kid out of there.

So anyway, there it is: a little look at my misspent youth…Other stories may follow at random intervals.