![]() ![]() You happen to them.Īfter hours of practice, I've earned the main course: my moment of glory in the Chieftain. When you're in a tank, things don't happen to you. It takes a lot of muscle power to haul back on the brake levers as I make tight turns on the winding, hilly track, and the exhaust-perfumed air and enclosed space soon make me queasy. He's watching from the rear hatch and takes over from time to time to save his trees. I find it incredibly hard to gauge where the edges of the vehicle are, but fortunately Borglum has a second set of controls. ![]() Now I'm peering at the world through a narrow opening, similar to the mail slot in a door. He lets me drive it around a bit with the front hatch open to get a feel for the steering, then closes the hatch. To give me a sense of this, Borglum introduces me to the FV432 armored personnel carrier. ![]() They'd be buttoned up behind thick metal hatches. In combat, real tank drivers wouldn't be rolling around with their heads sticking out. There's a life lesson in this: When you're in a tank, things don't happen to you. But now the tank comes down, smashes through the ice, water goes flying, and we go rolling along, right on course. ![]() After decades of driving in the Northeast, I know how this is going to play out: the skid, the spin, the sideways crash. Launching up a small hill, I come over the crest and find myself heading onto an iced-over pond. I trundle along a maze of dirt roads, gaining confidence and speed until I'm approaching this vehicle's max speed of 18 mph. From the condition of the bark on most of the trees, I can tell I'm not the first one to encounter this issue. Where exactly the sides of the vehicle are is a matter of pure speculation. The principles of driving the tank couldn't be simpler, but getting a feel for it takes a while. We head out to play on the Borglums' 24 acres of woodland. This doesn't feel like rumbling along in a car-it's more like grinding through a thick plank with a circular saw. I make a few turns and carefully accelerate to walking speed. Tenderly I nurse the gas pedal and creep forward, acutely aware of the vast bulk I'm now directing. Pulling on one side slows the tread, so that the vehicle skews in that direction. Instead of a steering wheel, you hold two levers. I climb into the driver's hatch of the FV433, and Borglum sits atop the armor just behind me. It's just an armored box on tracks-no different than a dozer." ![]()
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