Part of the "Two Crew" 2LT Gary Divito of Ohio mans the Tank Commander's .50 Caliber

The 'low water crossing' where so much water poured into our driver's hole that he panicked, thought he was drowning, and let go of the controls while we were partially submerged. Never a dull moment.

The view from the periscope in the driver's hole. Not the kind of visibility I'm used to in a motor vehicle. Note all the water from our near drowning experience in the water crossing above.

The "Two Crew" doing what tankers do best: eating. Eating a lot. 2LT Divito on the left and 2LT Estep on the right on the front slope of the tank with some Lil' Caesar's Hot n' Ready pizza before a mission.

Another massively long and exhausting week over with, but, the end is finally in sight! This next week and a half is our 10 day final Field Training Exercise, also known as Gauntlet, and after that we have out processing and graduation! It has definitely snuck up on all of us. But that’s the subject of a future post (mostly because it hasn’t happened yet). This week, I’ll be writing about the joys of the Tank side of Armor BOLC, albeit briefly because I’ve been putting this off all weekend and now I need to go to sleep so I can wake up again in just 5 hours (and it’s only 10pm…).

First of all, tank side is an absolute joy for me. Whatever the surprises, pleasant and otherwise, from Scout side, I joined the Armor branch because the M1A2 Abrams is gorgeous. So, naturally, the chance to learn how to fight individual tanks and then a whole tank platoon was truly delightful. Again, can’t believe I’m getting paid for this…

The tactics phase for tanks starts in the simulators in an accurate, scale model of the National Training Center in the deserts of Fort Irwin, California. We learned the fundamentals of the offense and defense and ran a series of missions both attacking and defending that once again highlighted our very incomplete mastery of the art of tanking. While most missions started with crisp formations, good communication, and accurate reporting to the commander, they generally devolved into running gun battles with tanks with tracks blown off desperately fighting off Soviet hordes while their comrades fought to get to them, or tanks, having expended all their ammunition driving in circles and firing at armored vehicles with the tank commander’s .50 Caliber machine gun. It was a lot of fun, but it was also clear that we all needed a lot of work, from the driver to the gunner to the tank commander, PL and PSG.

One of the days we did a ‘force on force’ which pitted each platoon against another in a narrow valley. Our Platoon fought Phil Baki’s platoon in the first mission of the day. At this point, we’d been in the simulators almost a week so we were much improved from the crazy first days of running and gunning. However, this mission didn’t go according to plan, which was unfortunate, because we are fiercely proud of our status as the best platoon in Hawk Troop.

Myself and the other two members of my crew, Corey Estep and Gary Divito, had been the crew of the #2 tank (the Platoon Leader’s wingman) for nearly a week and we had perfected the roles each of us played. We were widely recognized as the best tank in the platoon and we certainly helped our reputation this mission. Our plan was to take the high ground and wait for 3rd Platoon (the enemy) to come down the valley and use our artillery and long range fires to destroy them before they could hit us. However, we took too long setting up our defensive positions and before we knew it, our 3 and 4 tanks were both smoking wrecks somewhere to our rear. The Platoon leader called for our section to move to their last known location and prepare for contact. That was the PLs last transmission because he went over the wrong side of the hill and was knocked out immediately. So, within 15 minutes, it was 3 on 1 (one of their tanks had flipped in a wadi) and we were surrounded by enemies as far as I could tell. As we came up to our burning 3 and 4, our crew coordination really came into play. While I was talking to the commander (as the only surviving tank commander, I became the Platoon Leader) the gunner (Divito) was giving directions to the driver (Estep) and we were staying almost fully hidden while being able to see. When we popped over the last hill, we spotted our two dead tanks and two of 3rd Platoon’s tanks, lying in wait. We used the hill for cover and my crew did a fantastic job of popping over the hill, getting a shot off and reversing before they could react. We finished off both their tanks and immediately started looking for the last one.

As fate would have it, their last tank was Phil’s, so it was roommate v. roommate although we didn’t know it at the time. Little did we know, he’d been lying in wait just around the corner from his other two tanks the whole time. He’d watched them both burst into flame from our accurate fire, had determined there were certainly more than two tanks coming his way, and he turned tail and ran, trying to find another way to engage us. At that point, the cadre spared his blushes (in our opinion, of course) and called an end to the mission. It was all great fun and a great learning experience. We were justifiably proud.
After the simulators, we went out to the field for a few days. Now, one of the many negatives of moving to Ft. Benning from Ft. Knox is that there is no such thing as a tank maneuver area here. In fact, the EPA is so strict here, we are not even allowed to drive on the grass. I understand that tank treads do some serious damage, but it comes at the cost of training, plain and simple. Probably worth the lives of a few blades of grass… So, we were stuck on the roads. Our missions were fairly straightforward, such as IED clearance (which I got to drive for- let me tell you, driving a 70 ton tank is AWESOME. You can’t see hardly anything from the reclining seat in the driver’s hole so you just follow directions, and every time you stop, you immediately fall asleep in the dark, warm, comfortable compartment that is completely separate from the hectic activity in the turret.).

The other tank mission we did, as a whole company, was a cordon and search. This is a very common mission, especially in Iraq, where one force blocks the area around a few houses or a village while the other force comes in fast, raids a building, takes a high value target or looks for weapons, and then leaves. We had tanks doing the inner and outer cordon and the third platoon came in with Humvees and conducted the raid. It was pretty stressful, especially because the ‘enemy’ was very energetic, trying to climb on our tanks, shooting at us from the roofs, etc. We had one guy on the front slope of the tank trying to shoot our driver. So we did the only thing we could do. We swung the gun tube across the slope and knocked the guy off. Afterwards, I felt kind of bad about it, but hey, if you’re going to fight dirty…

It was all pretty good and realistic training, complete with non-combatants and angry villagers getting in the way, and our last mission provides a nice contrast with our last Scout mission, detailed in the previous post.

We were the outer cordon, controlling access into and out of the training area (mostly just annoying the civilian dump trucks who had to weave through our barbed wire while we glared at them for interrupting our training) when we got the call that the raid team had taken high casualties. They needed us to go into the town. Now, during scout side, as you’ll recall, our last mission ended with us spotting enemy from 3 km away, then driving home. On tank side, we got this call over the radio: “Blue 1 (our PL), this is Hawk 6 (the Troop Commander). The raid element has sustained heavy casualties, the whole village is resisting and has been all day. We need you to assault the town and lay waste.”

Seriously. He said ‘lay waste’ to the town. So we did! Four tanks, rolling down main street in the fairly large town and firing every weapon we had (all four that is) at every building, window, shadow, and enemy we saw. By the time we left, the whole area was shrouded in smoke and was certainly (though notionally) leveled. It was a complete thrill to be up in the hatch of a 70 ton tank as it rolled down a town street firing main gun rounds and machine gun rounds with abandon. It was a heart stopping moment and one where I decided that I loved my job.