Army Memoirs: Christine

My unit was slated to get brand-spankin' new M1A2's, but first we had to prep our old tanks for warstock. Which, by the way, was a complete pain in the ass. Some asshole in the maintenance office had a hard on for fucking with tankers, and so he used to inspect the sub-turrets of all the tanks for cleanliness before he'd accept the tank for turn-in (TI). That's a bunch of horseshit, because the dirt in the sub-turret has absolutely no bearing on how well or how poorly the tank operated.

But, I digress.

The entire unit was shuttled over to the new equipment motorpool in the LMTV, where we set eyes on the most beautiful creature a tanker can eyeball: M1A2's in sand color, without so much as a boot mark anywhere on the armor.

We were iffy about our tank, even though it was sort of random how they were issued out and numbered. "Hop, Towner, Polanco, Talosig, this one is yours." Even still, to know that the designation "C-12" (pronounced 'Charlie One-Two') would soon be stenciled onto the armor was enough to send us all into fits of nervousness. After all, as far as we were concerned, the 12 tank was cursed. The old Christine had been the cause of three metal screws in my Tank Commander's (TC) elbow, and was the responsible party behind the lacerations, contusions, abrasions, and general ouchies of every member of the crew.

And so we treated her gingerly, gently, and with reverent respect for the two weeks we spent on her in the field, breaking in the new gear.

All went well. Too well, in fact. After two weeks of relative safety (as much as can be expected when manning a $4M killing machine), we brought our beasts into the Division motorpool so the Assistant Commanding General of the First Cavalry Division could be there to see the tanks that accounted for a LOT of the Division's money.

The mechanics had taken the back deck off the tank and were using an overhead crane to pull out the powerpack, which is the engine, transmission, exhaust, intake, and everything that makes the tank go forward, backwards, and pivot. The powerpack weighs a shit-ton, and is about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, so I don't know exactly what the mechanic was thinking when he saw it start to slowly swing towards the turret of the tank after it had cleared the hole in the back of the hull.

My entire crew watched as it all happened, and just like in the movies, it went down in slow-mo.

Like I said, the powerpack cleared the hull of the tank no problem, but as soon as it was free of the hull, it made a slow, swinging motion towards the turret of the tank, which was traversed over the side. The mechanic thought he could prevent damage to the powerpack and the turret if he applied some precisely measured counterforce to the powerpack; that is, he thought he'd put his hand on the powerpack and give it a shove in the right direction.

What he didn't count on was the fact that the powerpack is heavier than I-don't-know-what, and the turret is also heavier than I-don't-know-what, which was inserted into hull and bolted down by way of a turret ring. The hull is also heavier than -- you guessed it -- I-don't-know-what, and of all these components (powerpack, turret, hull, hand), the only thing that was gonna sustain any damage would be his hand.

The powerpack smashed his hand into the turret, but luckily for him, it didn't break anything but skin. This is the slow-mo part I'm talking about: We watched as blood trickled onto the armor of C-12, awakening the bloodthirst in her, and officially christening the tank as Christine.

What was awesome about it all is that me and my crew were pissed at the mechanic for feeding blood to the tank.

This was the beginning of a very painful chapter for the crew of the new Charlie One-Two.