“Many U.S. politicians want to help Ukraine, but are feeling iffy about sending them tanks,” I just read, in a Motor Trend Magazine article.
So, maybe jokingly, or rather seriously, Ukraine may be reclassifying “U.S. tanks as recreational vehicles.”
Having been trained in the operation of military tanks, as the British might say, ‘donkey’s years ago,’ I must say that tanks can be regarded as recreational vehicles, like, for example, when driving a tank over rough terrain, which I did in one of our southern U.S. states and in the California desert.
Let me tell you, driving 52-ton tanks over hill and dale, plowing through drifts of desert sand, was 52 tons of fun… and probably somewhat similar to driving some modern-era, all-terrain recreational vehicles over hill and dale.
There’s nothing quite like being in the driver’s seat — or, the driver’s compartment, as it was known, in my day — of the old M48 tanks, getting engulfed in wave-after-wave of gritty sand, with the hatch wide open.
I imagine modern-day tanks are much different, but driving around in them must still be fun, when tank crews – or ‘tankers,’ as we were known, back then – aren’t darting around, in actual battlefield conditions.
Didn’t an actor, playing the role of a newspaper editor, in a TV series, once tell another actor playing the role of a reporter… “You’ve got spunk”? Reclassifying tanks as recreational vehicles, that sure seems to take lots of spunk, I’d say.
And when you come right down to it, some of those all-terrain vehicles that folks are driving around for recreational purposes, nowadays, may not weigh in at 50 tons, or so, but some of them are pretty big… like, for example…
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.