by Piers Platt
The entire crew communicates over their own intercom system which is piped through your helmet’s ear-cups and is always live – you just have to talk into the microphone in front of your mouth and the rest of the crew hears you. The ear-cups are active noise reducing, so they minimize the deafening sound of the tank engine and weapons firing, although you can turn this filtering off should you want to hear normally.
In addition to the three other members of his crew talking, a tank commander is also listening to his platoon radio net, which is used for communications between tanks in his platoon alone. Only one person at a time can broadcast on a radio net, but this still adds a second layer of sound if your crew is already talking. Finally, tank commanders will tune their second radio to the troop radio net, which allows vehicles among different platoons in the troop to talk to one another. Layer three! As an added bonus, when enemy contact occurs, the radio nets invariably go nuts with reports and orders, so at the exact moment you want to have a clear head so you can think straight, three different voices are usually yelling in your ears. Turn on two radios and your TV all at once and you’ll get a good idea for the kind of skill necessary to be able to filter information from three sets of voices simultaneously.
For tank commanders and gunners, the most nerve-wracking part about gunnery is that your internal microphones are “hot” at all times, meaning the graders watching your performance from the control tower are also listening intently to every word that is spoken in the tank. Every single mistake is recorded, deducted from your score, and later replayed for your benefit at the after action review.
Tank Table VIII includes ten engagements, six during the day, and four at night. The most complex engagement, known to tankers as “The Super Bowl,” is fired while the tank is driving, and includes two moving vehicle targets, one stationary vehicle target, and a set of troops. If you fire at the troops first, you fail the engagement. If you fire at the far vehicle or the moving vehicle first, you get points deducted – the nearest stationary vehicle is the most dangerous target, so you should have fired at it first. If you allow any target to drop without hitting it, you get points deducted. If the tank commander says to fire at one thing and the gunner shoots at another, you get a lot of points deducted. To qualify, crews must achieve a passing score of 70 out of 100 on all ten engagements, for a minimum overall score of 700 points out of a possible maximum of 1,000. “Shooting a thousand” is the tanker equivalent of pitching a perfect game, and happens nearly as rarely – a tanker will be extremely lucky to serve on a “1,000” crew just once in a 20-year career. When it happens, the tank commander buys his crewmembers each a case of beer.
Besides often having to sleep on the vehicles or stay up most of the night waiting for our turn on the range, gunnery sucked because of the field rations, which were most often pre-cooked, long shelf-life “meals” reheated in hot water. They were, predictably, disgusting, and only barely palatable with a heavy dose of Tabasco and/or ketchup. Soldiers, however, are nothing if not resourceful, and besides packing bags full of candy, beef jerky, and sodas, we had a secret weapon: Staff Sergeant Peiper had the local bakery trucks on speed dial. Around 11:30 each morning, almost without fail, Peiper could be heard standing on the top of his turret (for better signal), shouting into his cell phone.
“Hans! Ja, ja … hier ist Peiper. Kommen-sie bitte auf Range nummer hundert acht-zehn!”
And ten minutes later, instead of powdered eggs and soggy hash browns, we’d be feasting on hot schnitzel sandwiches with Bavarian pastries for dessert. Even the German employees who ran the ranges (known as “range-meisters”) got in on the action, selling Snickers and Schwip-Schwap, a German cola – breakfast of champions.
* * *
The majority of our tank gunnery training time was spent in the company of White (2nd) Platoon, our sister tank platoon in Bulldawg Troop. There was a good-natured rivalry between the two platoons, but we got along well. Their platoon leader was Brian Pierce, who had the good fortune to have one of the best platoon sergeants in the squadron, Sergeant First Class Nicholls. Nicholls was a loud-mouthed New Yorker who gave his opinion whether you asked for it or not, and he was invariably right, to the consternation of nearly every officer he served under. He lived and breathed tanks, and was a walking repository of tank technical details, mechanical intricacies, and cavalry lore.
Somehow, Nicholls had acquired a bullhorn which included a siren as part of his personal kit, which he used to great effect throughout field training. Many a napping soldier was rudely awakened with a bullhorn siren in his ear, or an imperious announcement at 6am from the tower overlooking the firing range:
“Wake up, shitheads!”
About halfway through our training, while running a range tower with no adult supervision around, Nicholls had the brilliant idea of blasting the bullhorn’s siren sound effect over the range radio, which broadcasts (anonymously) to hundreds of other ranges in the training complex, as well as the Range Control headquarters building. At random intervals, both night and day, the radio would crackle to life and a strident siren would rip out of the radio speakers, immediately followed by increasingly pissed-off orders from Range Control for “whoever it is” to “quit broadcasting the siren.”
Because live bullets are being fired, Range Control enforces extremely strict safety procedures, violation of any of which will result in the range being shut down temporarily and the Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs - sergeants) or officers in charge being “de-certified” (unable to supervise training and continue to run the range). The rules get a bit ridiculous at times, especially in Germany, where following the rules is the national pastime, so decertification happens to nearly everyone at least once during training – I was decertified while leading my very first range after forgetting (sleeping through) some mandatory early morning radio report.
At one point, Nicholls and I were running a range together, he as Range Safety Officer, and me as Range Officer in Charge. Out of the squadron’s nearly 30 tanks, just one final tank was left on the range, preparing for its gunnery qualification run. But we were about two minutes away from “dry time” in the afternoon, when the range had to be shut down, and there was no way this tank was going to finish in time. In addition, our medics (who by regulation need to be present every time a tank main gun is fired), had orders to move elsewhere as soon as dry time rolled around. Nicholls was pissed.
“Switch out with me, sir.”
“What? Switch out as Range Officer? Why?”
“Because I’m about to get decertified.”
It was too deliciously bad to refuse. We switched out (calling it in to Range Control, who maintains a log of who is in what position on which range), meaning that technically, he was now both the Range Officer in Charge and the Range Safety Officer, which was illegal. It wouldn’t take Range Control long to realize that administrative violation, and more importantly, they would hear our last tank merrily blasting away during dry time from all the way across the training area. It all came down to whether or not that tank could get enough rounds off before someone from Range Control physically showed up – Nicholls had already turned down the volume on the Range Control radio so we wouldn’t hear their inevitable attempts to contact us. The race was on.
For seven glorious minutes, that tank lit up the range. Then, just as the echoes reverberated from the final round, a Range Control van came tearing into the parking lot, and the Range Control NCO hustled out to climb the tower steps. By the time he burst in the door, Nicholls was on the radio already, like the smartass he was, calling in our request to close the range as if he had no idea what had just happened.
Nicholls had served as the squadron Master Gunner several years earlier, charged with overseeing training for all of the squadron’s tanks, so he knew all the tricks of the trade. In that role, he had kept a stack of recertification memos already signed by the squadron commander, so that whenever someone was decertified, he could scoot directly over to Range Control a
nd recertify them in a matter of minutes. Once, Range Control showed up on a range he was observing and decertified the Officer in Charge for a totally nitpicky, chickenshit reason, so Nicholls gave the Range Control guy a piece of his mind, which resulted in him being decertified as well, for general rudeness, apparently.
“I’m the squadron Master Gunner!” Nicholls told the man, laughing, “I’ll be recertified before you can fucking blink!”
He hopped in his van, hauled ass across the training area to Range Control, and dropped off his recertification memo. The guy there looked at it, confused.
“Uh, you’re not decertified …” He told Nicholls.
“I will be,” Nicholls replied.
As he walked back out the door, he met the guy who was about to decertify him, and flashed him a shit-eating grin.
* * *
Serving under me in 4th Platoon were two outstanding Staff Sergeants, Kean and Peiper. Peiper was my wingman, meaning our tanks – Green 1 (me) and Green 2 (Peiper) – would be operating as a mutually-supporting team during operations. The Army can be a pretty depressing place if you lose your sense of humor, but I soon learned that that would never be a problem with Peiper around. Much of the road network at the training area that year was being repaved, so there were temporary road signs along nearly every road. As we rolled our tanks out of the motor pool and headed for the shooting ranges on the first day, Peiper took the lead, and decided that those temporary road signs made for an excellent training opportunity for his driver. As we approached each sign at about 35 miles per hour, I watched his tank swerve partway off the road, make a minor steering adjustment to line up the road sign with the tank’s right-side tread, and then systematically crush it under 70 tons of steel.
Peiper loved his tank more than life itself, and the way he doted on it and tinkered reminded us of Han Solo’s relationship with the Millennium Falcon. By the time we left Iraq, that tank had an absurd amount of modifications – all against Army regulations, but brilliantly designed. Peiper built himself a GPS stand in his hatch, which not only held his portable GPS receiver where he could view it easily, but also kept it charged off the tank’s batteries. He designed and welded a metal rack for the turret that held extra cans of ammunition within easy reach of both his machine gun and the loader’s. At one point, he even wired a police car spotlight to his gun tube, which he found an infrared filter for, so that you could use it as an extra headlight, or make its beam only visible through night vision goggles.
A number of Peiper’s “upgrades” were aesthetic in nature. To begin with, the interior of his turret had been literally wall-papered with porn – hundreds of centerfolds had been painstakingly cut and pasted on every available surface. Months later, we were manning a checkpoint in Iraq along with a medic Humvee. One of the medics happened to be a woman, and she wandered up to Peiper’s tank after a hot, boring hour of watching the empty road.
“I’ve never been on a tank, Sergeant … can I see what it’s like inside?” she asked.
Peiper was momentarily rendered speechless.
“Um … no?” he said. He and his loader remained planted firmly in their hatches.
Tankers often paint slogans or insignias on their gun-barrels and hatches. Generally, these are badass words or comical phrases starting with the letter of the troop that platoon is in: an “A” Troop tank might have “Assassin” on its barrel, for instance. Peiper chose to meticulously copy a lesser-known SS Panzer Division insignia onto his gun tube, and decorated his hatch with the Wehrmacht’s slogan: “Gott mit Uns.” Though he was a hardcore history buff, he was no neo-Nazi – it was entirely out of boyish rebelliousness and respect for the legendary prowess of German armored forces. No one picked up on it, of course, until we were out conducting a mission in Iraq and told that several journalists were headed to our location for some interviews in the field.
About five minutes after the call came through, our journalists showed up in a couple of Humvees. We were expecting an ABC News crew or something, but it turned out they were actually from a toy model magazine that specialized in accurate military replicas – basically they wanted some pictures of our M1 Abrams tanks on actual combat missions to serve as the basis for a new model design. All of which might have been okay, had they not also been German.
There was an awkward moment after we were introduced, standing there in front of his tank, in which Peiper and I shared a long look. Then the escort Humvees rolled back a bit, leaving us alone with the journalists, and one of the Germans, leaning forward and pointing to the gun tube, whispered conspiratorially, “Das ist Waffen SS!?”
Peiper grinned: “Ja, genau.” Exactly.
The two men burst into laughter. They liked the porn on the inside even more. We gave them a tour of the vehicle, they took pictures from all angles, and gave us their business cards before they left. I haven’t been able to find it yet, but Peiper tells me there’s a German model set out there of his tank, with our picture on the box – and if you look very closely, you can just make out a strange insignia on the gun tube.
* * *
Our gunnery training was my first exposure to an age-old Army institution known as “Private jokes.” Practical jokes which take advantage of new soldiers’ (Privates) lack of experience and gullibility, Private jokes are an immensely entertaining time-killer for the many “wait” periods of the Army’s “hurry up and wait” work rhythm, while also letting the NCOs involved blow off a little steam. They all follow a similar pattern:
1. Order a Private to complete a task that is either nonsensical or impossible to achieve, but sounds plausible to an inexperienced soldier
2. Subtly reinforce that this task is critical to the unit’s combat effectiveness and by extension, our country’s national security
3. Watch selected Private struggle to understand / interpret his instructions, but brush them off if they request clarifications
4. Profit as you watch the unfortunate victim attempt to carry out his orders
For instance, a Private will be summoned to the NCO’s location, and told to check a tank’s armor for “soft spots.” The Private will be handed a hammer and a can of spray paint and told to circle any spot that sounds suspicious when hit with the hammer. The end result is a bewildered Private and a tank that looks like it has contracted chicken pox.
Otherwise, a Private might be asked to “check the tank’s shocks” by jumping up and down on the back deck – an utterly futile action on a 70-ton vehicle. A Private might be handed a plastic bag and told to get an exhaust sample from a tank’s engine, which, being a hugely powerful turbine, blows a massive blast of hot air behind the tank. Besides being nearly impossible to hold the bag in the strong exhaust stream, the exhaust is hot enough to melt the bag.
Private jokes can be fairly elaborate, too: while performing maintenance on a radio, a Private will be told to go get a can of “squelch” from the communications shop. “Squelch” is the Army term for the squeaky burst of static-like noise that occurs when you start broadcasting over secure radios. It’s a noise, not a physical thing. The victim then reports to the communications NCO, who has not been forewarned, but immediately recognizes the prank:
“Hmmm … squelch? No, we just gave our last can to Charlie Troop. Tell you what, though … I think 601st Maintenance had some last week. Why don’t you try them?”
On an especially slow day back in Schweinfurt, Staff Sergeant Kean once had a Private going for nearly six hours on the “can of squelch” trick, including sending him to four different units, which forced him to take the bus between the two different posts in Schweinfurt – twice.
Field training provides ample opportunities for pranks; Germany is known for its thick fog in spring and fall, which is just as impenetrable to a tank’s thermal sights as it is to normal vision. Therefore, training is often at a standstill for several hours while the fog clears. Each tank range has a series of markers that delineate the left and right boundaries of the range area �
� the area within which you must fire your rounds. For reasons unknown, these large orange triangles are known as range “fans.”
On a particularly foggy morning, Sergeant First Class Nicholls got bored and called two new Privates up to the tower.
“Here’s what I need you to do.” He paused to let them pull pens and paper out of their cargo pockets to take notes. “Go downrange and turn the range fans on. They are about a thousand yards out, the big orange triangles, you can’t miss ‘em. There’s a little switch on the side, just flip it to ‘On’ and we’ll get this fog blown off. Got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
They trotted off, disappearing into the mist, to return about 20 minutes later.
“Sergeant Nicholls?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh … we can’t find the switch.”
If he’d been really bored, he might have given them more detailed information about the bogus switch and sent them back, but he didn’t feel like being too cruel that day.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it – we just found the switch in the tower up here. Thanks, though.”
Officers aren’t exempt from such treatment, either. There is a long-standing tradition in the Army of “rolling up” or hazing new platoon leaders during training. After a long day at one range, as we closed up our tanks and headed to the barracks for some sleep, White Platoon tackled their new Lieutenant, Brian Pierce, who put up a pretty good fight. Staff Sergeant Kean found me at the same time, and warned me to get to the barracks, but a couple of the younger soldiers also found me seconds later and quickly had me on the ground. I fought to get loose, but with five of them on me, I didn’t have much of a chance. They quickly had us duct-taped to the point of immobility, and hoisted us each onto a tank main gun tube, dangling underneath by our taped-up arms and legs. After a good five or ten minutes of whacking our butts with hands full of baby powder (which was and still is very confusing to me), they cut us down and made nice. We were both good-natured about it – in an odd way, it’s both a way to blow off steam and a bonding moment for the platoon – but other officers have been known to get pretty hot, and have therefore been left trussed up on the gun tube for several hours to cool off.