Baltic
08-30-2005, 02:25 PM
May 3, 2005 Sargeant Scott Stewart saw the tanks first. They were partially hidden in the late afternoon shadows that stretched across the narrow street lined with three-story buildings. The Iraqi T-72 tanks sat nearly side-by-side, the one on the right with its gun tube pointing north, the other close to the curb with its gun tube pointing south, directly at the lead tank in which Stewart was riding. Stewart, only a few months into his job as trigger puller on an M1A1 Abrams, stared into the gunner’s primary sight as his 70-ton tank rounded a corner and slowly moved north through a dingy, dun-colored southern suburb of Baghdad called Mahmudiyah. “Tanks!” Stewart radioed to his tank commander, S.Sgt. Randy Pinkston. Pinkston, a tall, lanky Texan, was buttoned up inside, peering through the small vision blocks in the commander’s hatch. He could not quite make out the shapes of the two objects in the middle of the street about 500 meters ahead. Pinkston looked down the sights of his .50-caliber machine gun and thought the two indistinct blobs looked more like BMPs, Soviet-made amphibious troop carriers, than T-72 tanks. Whatever they were, they were certainly not friendly. Nothing about this entire city about fifteen miles south of Baghdad was friendly. It was home to a portion of the Medina Division, one of Saddam Hussein’s vaunted Republican Guard units, and the whole city seemed to be dripping with ill-disguised contempt for us as we made our way through the congested streets.
-----
Long but interesting. http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/4001/
PS. Sorry if already posted
-----
Long but interesting. http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/4001/
PS. Sorry if already posted