Tankers vs. Non-Tankers: the never-ending discussion among armor crewmen

  

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 1-70^th 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 6-68^th 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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Blackhawk Helicopter at Sunset, Ali Air Base, Iraq, December 2009

Today I was looking at photos from my tour in Iraq in 2009-10.  Near the end of the tour, the days were shorter and winter sun shone on the aircraft.  I took these photos at sunset on the airstrip on Camp Adder, Talil Ali Air Base, Iraq.  

Every Week in Cold War West Germany, Gas Mask Drills

Every week during my three years in Cold War West Germany, 

the Tankers of 1-70th Armor had a MOPP drill. Gene Pierce, Abel Lopez and Don Spears

are in the motor pool celebrating MOPP Level 1. 

With Russian Nerve Agent VX in the news, I remembered donning a mask and occasionally putting on full protective gear every week when I was stationed in Wiesbaden in Cold War, West Germany in the late 70s.  An alarm would sound and we would mask wherever we were and continue to work.  

Most days, if we were on post we were in the motor pool.  If we were tightening end-connector bolts or checking ammo racks, we masked and continued with the task in hand.  I had taught classes, including Chemical, Biological, Radiation classes when the alarm sounded and had the odd experience of seeing a room full of men stand and mask, then resume their seat.  It is difficult to be understood wearing a mask, so I dismissed the class.

It really sucked for those who had been waiting for food in the huge consolidated mess chow line then were not able to eat it.  

We did not often go to full MOPP gear (Military Oriented Protective Posture) because they were controlled items and had to be signed for.  Of course, when the drill was going to be full MOPP we knew it because it had to be issued in advance and carried everywhere: charcoal-lined suit, boots, gloves, everything.  

The Soviets had millions of pounds of VX gas they manufactured before they had a nuclear bomb and kept making for years after.  I wrote about the leader of the VX program in the Soviet Union recently, a man named Boris Libman who shows just how bad life can be for a hero of the Soviet Union.

With Soviet nerve gas back in the news, the Cold War is back in our lives.