Tank Gunnery 1976, Part 6, Moving Truck, Coax Machine Gun

The second to last target on Table VIII is a moving truck panel.  As with the moving tank target, we had practiced tracking moving targets more than anyone else in the battalion.  We were ready to perforate the track mounted panel as soon as we saw it.  But the real preparation for this engagement was done by my loader, Gene Pierce.  The M73 coax machine gun was a reliable weapon in general, but in my experience was finicky about dirt and ammo feed.

The night before Table VIII Pierce cleaned our coax to whatever coax perfection can be.  By the time we reached the moving truck target, we had fired the coax twice in engagements one and four, firing 100 rounds at each firing point.  We had 100 rounds to hit the moving truck, which is plenty, unless the gunner gets interrupted and has to re-acquire his sight picture.

We were tense rolling from the .50 cal. engagement looking for the moving panel.  We also knew pretty much where the panel would be since the moving panels are in roughly the same area of the range.  Pierce was scanning with me, mostly to show the grader we were following procedure, but he was ready to drop down the moment we saw the target and ready to keep the coax firing if anything went wrong.

I saw the target move.  Announced "Gunner! Coax! Moving Truck!"  We stopped smoothly as I swung the turret to the moving panel.  Pierce yelled "Up!"  Merc said "On the way!"  Pierce lightly held the belt of 7.62mm ammo as it fed into the M73 machine gun.  Tracers sailed winked out of sight as the passed through the panel.  Merc knew he was on target and burned the 100 rounds in short bursts.  I announced "Cease fire! Driver move out."

Now we were heading to the last engagement.  The last round on Table VIII is still one of my favorite all-time moments in the Army.

In the meantime, an instructional video on the M73 coax machine gun.

"A Hero of Our Time" and "Brother" Wild, Wild West in Russia

I just finished the book "A Hero of Our Time" by Mikhail Lermontov.  If you like Western novels, or War novels, this book will make you smile.  I laughed out loud at some of the conversations among soldiers in this book.  So why does a novel with Russian soldiers as main characters make me think of "Western" novels and movies?  For the same reason the first Star Wars movie (1977) made me think Western: the setting an scenery is the frontier and civilization is somewhere else.  

"Hero" is set in the Caucuses mountains, near Georgia on the southern frontier of Imperial Russia about 200 years ago.  The soldiers in frontier outposts are there to protect the borders and and to stop the locals from rising in rebellion against their new masters.  The Russian soldiers trade with the locals and try to stay on peaceful terms, but they do not think the natives are fully human.  Just as the American soldiers in frontier outposts tried to keep the peace, but were ready to fight.

The novel is really several related stories revolving around the main character Pechorin and an old soldier named Maxim.  

The first time I read this book was in the summer of 1980 in a Russian Literature class at Penn State Harrisburg.  The professor loved this book.  He was a Serbian, a World War 2 veteran who fought the Germans and their allies the Croatians.  Professor Djordjevic was a 60-year-old chain smoker with not much longer to live when I met him.  He escaped to America through Hungary in 1956.  He fought the Nazis from the Serbian mountains and escaped the Russians who occupied Serbia through those same mountains.  Professor Djordjevic was a mountain soldier and clearly identified with "Hero."

"Brother" is related to "Hero" because for me it had that same feel of the lone hero/cowboy on the frontier.  In the case of Brother, all the action is in St. Petersburg, Russia, so the setting is not the frontier.  But it is in the 1990s in the midst of the economic collapse and lawlessness after the fall of the Soviet Union.  And the main character of Brother is a veteran of the nasty Chechen war of 1994.  The action at the end of the movie has many links to gunfights in traditional Western movies and watching Brother load his own shotgun shells will delight Western fans.

Russia, like America, started as a small country that grew by conquering and settling neighboring areas.  It had a "Louisiana Purchase"-like expansion in the 1600s when it bought Siberia for a price as cheap as the one America got.  Many of the problems Russia has had relate to rapid expansion and trying to hold on to conquered territory, just like the Wild, Wild West here in America.