In the Army Now - The joy of the Armed ForcesI've never been a soldier. I was an air cadet once, but that mostly involved sitting in a mouldy hut learning about aeroplane engines with the hint that one day we might go flying.
Yet, anyone who has spent time defending their nation, or at least drinking bromide-laced-tea for their nation, must have stories to tell. Tell them now.
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chthonic, Thu 23 Mar 2006, 18:26)
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Brother in LawMy Brother In Law being an RAF type, he also studied Russian and now Arabic for the purposes of radio monitoring. Anyway the story he told me when he was stationed in Germany (pre the fall of berlin wall) and was practising Tank driving on the AutoBahn with a superior.
He was in what he described as a '60s armoured APC' apparantly they couldn't afford anything modern...Anyway they were cruising along the Autobahn and the APC started going slightly to the left and needed to be straighten up. At this point he realised that the right steering lever wasn't working at all, which he reported to his superior who was right next to him. The superior ordered him to do an emergency stop, which requires you to pull back on both levers.
This resulted in him veering violently left from the outside lane narrowly avoiding cars plowing through the intersection, missing an oil tanker by about four feet, flying down the offramp on the other side, avoiding driving into a lake, then managing to park in a thick bush. I have no idea what form of thick German shrub can stop an armoured apc, I should have asked.
Apparantly he caused about 400,000 pounds of damage, or Deutschmarks...I forget
(, Mon 27 Mar 2006, 17:56, Reply)
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