With Our Forces in West Germany
Train, John
the phenomenon which happened in Rye one month ago could have been replicated in Rome two thousand years ago or in Athens twenty-five hundred years ago, or in Pithom thirty-seven hundred years ago,...
...I did discover the merit of armor over infantry: you're a fat target, but while you last, you stay warm and dry...
...I will take the boasting of wild spending and potlatching any day of the week...
...Sergeant Kelley's tank crew in Alpha Company was short a loader, so I climbed on board...
...Tanks have to coordinate with Z 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983...
...They carry a huge 105mm gun, together with a 7.62mm machine gun mounted and armed with the 105, and a .50 caliber machine gun that is mounted in the turret and fired by the commander against aircraft or ground troops...
...In an exercise you fire blanks that give a satisfying bang, flash, and puff of smoke, to show that you've finished off a bad guy...
...I thought of all that, and I offered those observations, and then I returned to the conversation at Mr...
...until you button up under artillery or gas attack), I had a fine time grinding over the valleys and wooded hills of Bavaria, pitying the poor infantry down there in the freezing mud...
...The Third Division has M60-A3s: camouflage-painted fifty-ton iron monsters...
...I never quite knew what got us...
...At the end of a day slipping along treelines we finally broke out through artillery fire and protective smoke to overrun a defensive position, firing a blank salvo at our immediate target, a Vulcan antiaircraft unit...
...A sense you get out in the field is that between two well-matched teams every play has its counter...
...Our turn came, though, after we were unable to settle into good cover as we ended one rush...
...Since you don't fire live ammo on maneuvers, and since the loader, who also acts as a spotter, has a separate hatch to look out of John Train is author of The Money Masters, Remarkable Names, and other books, and is a columnist in Le Matin (Paris), Harvard Magazine, and Investors Chronicle (London...
...Infantry with TOW or Dragon missiles can kill a tank, but the armor calls down artillery to toss the infantry about, followed by its own infantry...
...John Train WITH OUR FORCES IN WEST GERMANY Are we ready in Europe...
...Even if it is sickeningly self-obsessed, painfully hurtful to those of us who are poor, it still has some spark of exuberance, of effort, of joy in living...
...the phenomenon which happened in Rye one month ago could have been replicated in Rome two thousand years ago or in Athens twenty-five hundred years ago, or in Pithom thirty-seven hundred years ago, and perhaps in caves in Ethiopia before that...
...A Cobra helicopter can rocket an armored personnel carrier or a tank, but a nearby Vulcan or Chapparal cuts up the chopper...
...Anyway, we meekly swung our tube (as tankers often call a gunbarrel) to the rear and pulled off...
...0...
...The Cobra carries TOW missiles, and the A-10 has a 30mm cannon that fires 100 armor-piercing shells a second into a tank's lightly armored deck and makes a shambles of its innards...
...Sergeant Kelley did some fancy cursing, but we were stuck, waiting for a repair vehicle...
...We would have been as helpless against the Soviet equivalent of a Cobra anti-tank helicopter or roving A-10 Thunderbolt attack plane as a raccoon caught in a trap...
...Since I am just a spectator, entitled to boast of neither old nor new money, I offer only one observation on the maniac boasting of extravagance or stinginess...
...On maneuvers you get resurrected, though, so after the prescribed pause we set off again...
...Tankers dread the A-10, a deadly jet that can fight on after half its skin has been shot away...
...An artillery burst, or perhaps an anti-tank missile...
...Still later, the real world, not the simulated battle, caught up with us...
...Chow, just at the point where N. was saying, "So Jason's Bar Mitzvah is coming up, and I said to him, 'Boychik, how would you and your friends like to go on a safari in Kenya on a chartered 747?' And you know what the little bandit says...
...Night drew on...
...Working sidewise down a hill-an awkward movement-the M60 threw a track...
...and in September...
...A s an infantryman, I know all too well that it always rains on maneuvers...
...Still, I was startled in the field with the Third Armored Division, to hit not only rain-as was inevitable-but snow...
...Dad, I'd rather have your Ferrari.' That kid's gonna make us all look poor some day...
...I think the Vulcan got quite a jolt...
...Sierra, you're dead," crackled in over the radio...
Vol. 16 • February 1983 • No. 2
