So much of the Army is competition, especially the combat
arms parts of the Army where men are confined together in small armored spaces
and have endless hours to “talk shit.”
When my small armored space was the turret of an M60A1Patton tank, one of the subjects that came up among us young sergeants was the
question: Who is a Tanker, and who is a Non-Tanker?
Before gunnery, I was a Non-Tanker. Not only had I never
qualified on Tank Table VIII (Tanker’s final exam), but I had transferred from
the Air Force. A Wing Nut is not a Tanker.
So I was in the Limbo of those who simply never had been to annual
gunnery. Worse still, I enlisted in the Army in June
1975 after leaving the Air Force. Because I carried over my rank as
Specialist4, I started as a gunner in 1-70th Armor. I made sergeant
in February and, partly from a shortage of sergeants, got my own tank crew
right away. Not only was I a Non-Tanker,
I was the Non-Tanker in Charge of his own crew.
That first year, I fired “Distinguished” at tank gunnery at
Fort Carson, Colorado, in April 1976.
Because I qualified near the top of the battalion, I was allowed to be
part of the discussion of who was a Tanker and who wasn’t from that time
forward, at least until 1978.
Every competitive job or sport has a group of insiders who
discuss for hours, especially when drinks are involved, their equivalent of who
is Tanker, and who is a Non-Tanker. Whatever
the field, the insider is competent, the outsider is in some critical way
incompetent.
I have not been a Tanker since 1984, but the intense
discussion came back to my mind in 2014 when I read the book, “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro. The central character is a butler in one of the
“Great Houses” in the time between the World Wars when the butler had a
household staff ranging between a platoon and a small company. At one point in the novel, a dozen butlers
gather for drinks and have an intense discussion of what a butler is, what are
the critical skills, who were and who currently are the greatest butlers, and,
of course, who among those not currently in the room are mere pretenders.
As with any clique, one’s place is never permanent. In January
1978, I took a job at Brigade headquarters and stayed there for rest of my
tour. I became a “Non-Tankin’ MotherF*#ker”
immediately. I got out at the end of
1979 and went to college. In 1982, I joined Alpha 6-68th Armor for
two years. I made staff sergeant, became
a section leader and as an active duty soldier in a reserve unit, I was back to
being to being a Tanker! But in 1984, I got a job offer that would make it
impossible to be a reservist, so I left the Army. Although I re-enlisted in
2007, I was in aviation and so was a Non-Tanker ever after.
In many ways, being a tanker really was, “The Best Job I
Ever Had” and discussions about who was or was not a Tanker was one of the ways
I knew how deep into my that job I was.
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