When I was a tank crewman in the Army, other branches of the service used to call us

[Aristus]

"dumb-ass tankers"

Some idiot on the M1 Abrams Tankers Facebook page sure isn't doing anything to refute the insult. He bellowing and blustering about "that socialist Muslim Obama". This doesn't make me ashamed to be a tanker; it makes me ashamed that he's a tanker!

[kimi]

1. I'm constantly amazed

at what former military members say on Facebook. I was an Air Force nurse - an officer - and took care of a lot of those galoots who now turn out to be these stupid reactionary lamebrain assholes. But ya know what? - as a medical officer I took care of em, it was my job. Still, I cringe when I hear what they say now.

FWIW, I never called you guys "dumb-ass tankers". You were service members, same as all of us. Peace.

[UTUSN]

5. That's one of the main reasons I don't frequent veterans bars

It pisses me off at the "jockular" jibes at the different branches. For me, all of us were proles who traded some years of our lives, like indentured servitude, for future education and homesteading, if we survived.

I detest how branches are played against one another.

[JSnuffy]

40. Relax...

99.9% of it is harmless..

Well it's all harmless but the .1% are just dicks.

Nothing wrong with Puddle Pirates (Coast guard), Seaman jokes, caveman marine jokes, bike ride on my pt test airmen or poking fun at the myriad of amazingly dumb things the Army does as well.

Particularly fun is the MOS wars within the Army and I assume the other branches as well.

18>11>Everyone else yada yada yada

[Aristus]

8. That's sweet, thank you. Peace to you, as well.

My Dad was in the Air Force as an enlisted man; then he joined the Army Nurse Corps when he got his RN. So you two have that in common.

Back when I was in, I was fairly apolitical. I'm glad; I would have hated being around all the right-wing assholes if I had been as politically aware then as I am now.

[kimi]

17. In the Nurse and Medical Corps

I found that most folks were Democrats. Go figure.

[UTUSN]

2. I don't like being called Swabbie or Squid. n/t

[UTUSN]

4. We called Army "doggies" but that doesn't sound bad? n/t

[Aristus]

9. Nah. Under the right circumstances, it's something to be proud of.

My first duty station was with the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany; the "Dog-Faced Soldiers", we were called, and proud of it.

[rppper]

6. or bubbleheads for the submariner types....

like me!....then again i have my dolphins tattooed on my chest with "death from below" written underneath....

i got into an interesting debate on a sub vet facebook page tonite...didnt end well after i was called naive....

[UTUSN]

7. I'm too old to do it, but am thinking of a tat there - before or after open heart?!1

I've got an anchor on upper arm, but small and blurred-blue. Am thinking about a modern touch-up, bigger, sharper.

However, who cares since with my physique, it ain't a show kind of thing.

[rppper]

38. i've got a defib/pacemaker....

got it drawn just below it....the tatooist was more nervous about it than i was....

[Lasher]

15. My dad was a submariner on a WWII diesel boat.

He was awarded the Submarine Combat Patrol Badge six times for his War Patrols in the Pacific.

USS Nautilus (SS-168) My dad was a radioman. He also served as a crew member when they manned the boat's 6 inch deck guns.



You submariners think you're elite because you clearly are.

[rppper]

39. my 1st sea dad was a deisel boat sailor....

he was on the bonefish, which caught fire back in the 80's and was subsequently decomm'd and scrapped....he had some pretty horrific stories about the fire.....your dad was a breed apart from nuke sailors like i was....now i'm considered a dinosaur...i drove every boat i served on. the controls were very much like those of an aircraft. now they are joystick controled by 1 planesman vrs. two for the boats i drove....and the last boat i served on, ssn770 uss tucson, was commisioned in '95......i'd be almost lost on one of the virginia class ssn's

[MiddleFingerMom]

3. HHT 2ACR here 1973-76 - never heard you guys called "dumb-ass tankers". n/t

[Aristus]

10. Maybe it was a more recent appellation.

I've heard the term "tread-head", too. Maybe that pre-dates the "dumb-ass tanker" insult.

Anyway, you were with the Cavalry, huh? Cool!

[Archae]

11. Do they still call tanks "tin cans?"

Purely in jest, of course.

[Aristus]

12. No.

When most American tanks were Stuarts, it would have made sense.



With the Abrams, not so much:

[Lasher]

13. They were jealous because you got to ride around in a manly tank.

It would be awesome to cruise around the neighborhood in an Abrams. You'd better get that pickup truck the hell outta my way, asshole! The machine guns! The bigass cannon!

[Aristus]

14. It WAS awesome.

I loved every minute of my four years as a tanker. It was a hella macho kick. As a peace-loving liberal, though, I'm almost ashamed of my fascination with military hardware. Almost...

[Lasher]

16. So which tank did you serve on?

A photo would be nice.

[Aristus]

31. I served on all three existing models.

I crewed the M1A1 in Germany and in the Gulf.
I crewed the old original model M1 when I was re-assigned to the States. The tank I crewed then had the serial number 0000008.
And I was on the test bed for the M1A2 in 1993 just a few months before I got out of the Army.

Some pics:

[Lasher]

34. Great pics!

Trained killer!

[Aristus]

35. If you say so.

A rich lady's purse-sized yappy dog is more dangerous than I am...

[irisblue]

22. i want one

driving in the 270 or 315 traffic in the afternoon would be so much more...sensible. no one would tailgate that's for sure

[kimi]

18. I spent most of my active duty time

on a missile base. (My active-duty son is on one now.)


You can just imagine the double-entendres associated with the word and image "missile".



Go ahead, just imagine. I dare ya!

[sarge43]

20. Or aircraft. She said cockpit. Heh, heh, heh.

Really, I don't know why Aristus is upset. We Blue Suiters (past and present) have Perry. "There's power, lift.... I forget the third... Oh yeah, drag. Wait, there's four (splat). Right, gravity."

I wonder if the gov would use "they're just kids" excuse if his ground crew had pissed inside the nacelles.

[MilesColtrane]

19. Your tank wasn't haunted, was it?

[irisblue]

21. LOVED that comic when i was a kid.

thanks for bringing that memory back

[sarge43]

23. There's only one thing that may be asked of all of us who serve(d)

Did we honorably do our duty as given to us? Everything else is just luck of the draw.

By the way Aristus, dead drunk in some nasty ratskeller, you were still a better soldier than that asshole could ever hope to be.

[era veteran]

24. I am tanker too as was the old man.

I fight off the right wing barrack rats views of the world on the 3rd Armor Division Facebook site (U.S. Army stationed in Germany 3rd Armor Division).
I hear there is hate radio on AFN now.
M60
M60A1
M60 A2, the badass transition tank
XM1, Tried to get in the project@ Knox as a short timer in '76.
An honorable profession.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt="M60 A2 Main Battle Tank, '70's / 152mm gun night fire, a day on the job."></a>

The Rock, Ayers Kaserne - Kirch Göns, FRG, People transfered to Vietnam to get off the Rock, I liked it.
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Aristus]

32. Ah, the much-maligned "Starship".

I wonder what that was like to crew?

Drive on! Tanker-tough!

[era veteran]

50. Spearhead!

[muggwamper]

52. A company, 3d BN, 33d Armor

I remember the cold winters there, (the rock), and the trips we made to field exercises.
I left there in the winter of 77, and remember that I painted my combat boots,
tied the laces together and left them hanging from a telephone line that crossed
the street. When I got back to the world, gave away all my military uniforms, except
one field jacket, (still have today), and one laundry bag, (still use today).
Never kept in touch with anyone from over there. Still have a picture of President Ford
when he showed up.

[MrScorpio]

25. I never had anything bad to say about tankers in my 22 years in the USAF

You guys did a job that I would never do.

[av8rdave]

26. Amongst those I served with...

There are a handful of fellow progressives. I've noticed that the big difference is that the progressives don't feel the need to ram their views down everybody else's throats. The right wingers do that, ignorantly believing that everyone else shares their views.

[trof]

28. I hear ya'.

I used to belong to a group called 'Ancient Aviators'.
Bunch of old fart pilots (mostly former military) who got together once a month to chew the fat and listen to a speaker on some aviation related subject.
I really enjoyed it.

The very nice guy who started the group got too old and infirm to come to meetings and some right-wingers took the reins.
Just like you said, they assume that everyone else shares their political views.

They decided we needed a 'mission statement' (who knows why? ) and THAT says 'Although liberals are not banned they should understand that most of us are very conservative...blah, blah, blah."
Meetings took on more political undertones.

That did it for me.
Sayonara, assholes.

[av8rdave]

36. Sounds like aviation was too tough a subject for those guys

It's a shame when people can't leave a good thing alone.

[oneshooter]

27. During my time in the Corps we refered to tanks as"targets".

[trof]

30. That's what submariners call ships.

[era veteran]

37. It's good to have a PR Battalion behind you

when you face 57 tons of very loud steel up your backside. LOL

[oneshooter]

41. If it is "very loud steel" then it don't last long.

Got along with the treadheads in the Bat. We depended on them to not run over us, and they depended on us to keep the sappers away.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[era veteran]

46. Combined Arms

Army nomenclature.
Only way to fly.

[oneshooter]

48. Something the Marines started in the 40's.

Air, Armor, Infantry, Support, all going together to the same goal.

[Burma Jones]

29. So once I was in a briefing to the USMC Deputy Commandant for Installations & Logistics

We were talking about Logistics Modernization. He commented that Marines are generally from "one side of the political spectrum" The result of this, according to the General, was that these guys were easy to indoctrinate, but very hard to educate...........This was meant to guide how we introduced new Logistics systems.....

[DevonRex]

33. Tell him all the voice intercept folks are listening

In on all his phonecalls now. Heck we know where he lives and we bugged his house. It all gets recorded and forwarded to Obama's NSA. Uh oh. The grapevine says HUMINT is involved now.

[Charlemagne]

42. Congrats! This psot made the hallowed pages of a RW website

Last edited Mon Jan 23, 2012, 12:31 PM - Edit history (1)

[TreasonousBastard]

44. You're not supposed to mention that place here...

some legal shit is going on and it could cause trouble.

Other than that, I've always wondered why they spend more time stalking us than the important stuff, like trying to get laid. Imagine what they'll talk about when they find out what sex is like when you don't have to pay for it.

[Aristus]

45. Let me guess:

"hez a libruhl, so howcum he sez he wuz in tharmee? libruhls HAT amercia!11!1 Im SERIES!1!!1"

[MiddleFingerMom]

49. You nailed it -- part of it anyway. They also thought YOU were calling tankers "dumb-ass tankers".

.
.
.
Not a very convincingly BRIGHT bunch over there.
.
.
.
Made fun of the "fact" that you had probably never seen combat and then got all butthurt and
poorly defensive when someone else knocked him for disrespecting your service -- whether you
had been in a combat zone or not. "That's not wut Ah ment!!!"
.
.
.
Yes, it was.
.
.
.
Reading their posts got boring really, REALLY quickly -- and it DID seem like their main raison d'etre
was to focus on this website.
.
.
.
Damn ingrates. They owe us their very EXISTENCE!!! (Bet you thought that I was gonna say "Damn
inbreds" -- that's not 'til next time.)
.
.
.
I STARTED at HHT 2ACR providing medical coverage to the tankers at the Grafenwoehr (sp) range and
worked my way ASAP to ACT (helicopters) to provide coverage to the scouts (because we humped our
ASSES off for about a day and then literally sat around with our thumbs up our asses -- well, not literally
THAT part -- for a day or two 'til everyone caught up to us).
.
Hard work, but a lot of downtime in between the work part.
.
.
.
My first time with them, the big guy (it's ALWAYS the big guy) who had to carry the .30 cal machine
gun bitched and moaned and moaned and bitched all day about it. The next time we humped, I offered
to carry it for him "for a while" and, though it was ROUGH... I kept it all day without a whimper. I gave
it back without a word. He NEVER bitched and moaned about carrying it again (I was the fucking ragbag
MEDIC, ffs!!!).
.
The guys LOVED me after that -- I could do no wrong. I was certainly no "dumbass tanker".
.
.
.

.
.
.

[TreasonousBastard]

43. Well, I remember ONE dumb-ass tanker...

Do wrenches count as tankers?

One Saturday night this wrench in was homesick and wanted to go back to Brooklyn. He was also very drunk. And it was in Germany.

So, he cuts through a fence and starts up a tank. Which one? I have no idea. Which base? I'm not sure but I don't think it was Baumholder-- more likely closer to the East German border. He breaks through the fence and off the base and into town. A small German town.

Tanks being pretty big, he squashes half the cars parked on the small streets. Squashed a few getting off base, too, I seem to remember. He fixes tanks, so he knows how they work, but he's not so good at driving them. At some point, he's kinda lost so he stops in a Gasthaus to ask directions. To Brooklyn.

Polizei and MPs show up pretty fast and he disappears into some black hole while MPs try to get the tank out of the parking lot, squashing whatever cars are left.

Amazingly, no one got hurt. (Except the wrench, at the hands of the MPs.)

[era veteran]

47. We had PFC Pippen

Stole an AIT training tank @ Knox, long story, but he ran over a bunch of MP Sedans and fucked up Main Post Area in 1973. I got to see it. Nobody died but I bet he was in Kansas for a while.

[muggwamper]

51. PFC Pippen

I was there, it has been 40 yrs ago this month. I never met Pippen, I was in the barracks next door.
I remember hearing a different story about Pippen, (remember I was next door and not in the same bldg), But the story I heard was that he was trying to break up a fight, and when the MP's showed up, they showed him how the billy club worked. I remember the story going on that he tried to explain that he was innocent, but just got a ride to be MP station.
I don't remember where I was when he stole the tank, but I remember going to look at the MP station after he hit it. I also thought that he ran into the PX, (because he mistook the red bricks). The little PX was a single story, and if I remember correctly, it was red brick like the MP station.
Sure was a great experience, to learn how to work on those tanks.
Never used that experience out in the real world, now I am retired and live in Florida.

[hrmjustin]

53. Welcome to DU my friend!

[era veteran]

54. He was a recycle

Was not going to make it. A screw up. Wanted to call home on Company Phone. CQ would not let him. He got mad broke all the windows in dayroom, punched them out. Knocked over the vending machines and left. He went to motor pool and got on a brand new rebuild M60A1. Never had even been on dirt, we were getting it ready for Memorial Day Parade. He stole that one. MP's said they got on moving tank and subdued him. What really happened after he ran through MP station was he thought tank would not fit under that old RR overpass by the old PX and the 'brave' MP's beat his PCP'd ass with nightsticks. He was in my Company.