BGBMAW: Miko..i love reading first hand experince with military equipment..Thank You..
Please feel free to write doen all your tank experience..
missfires-thrown tracks..shootin sht, - engines- trannies.. and of course..blowing more stuff up! 
Here is one.
There was one time on maneuvers when we had for the first time to use the integral digging plow (flat plate hinged on the lower part of the front ">" - not to confuse with anti-mine plows that were optional equipment installed in front of each track) to dig a tank entrenchment of the correct profile in sandy clay soil - with two ramps, etc. That plow is usually held by bolts to the body and drops and digs in going forward but lifts and drags going in reverse. It is obviously narrower than a tank, being between tracks.
My crew consisted only of myself and my mechanic - the commander being detached to the political officer producing a "wall newspaper" about our achievements and readiness, I believe - having some artistic talent with a brush he was always doing this kind of propaganda crap leaving us to pull the sling, bastard...
After a few frustrating hours we just gave up with finesse, dug a huge triangular hole with two mounds at its ends and ten filled it back in from those mounds to the right profile with shovels - even evened it with a wooden plank to be precise withing a half inch. Took us all night but we beat the other full crews by quite a while figuring the right way to do it while they still f#$ked with the damn plows.
By that time of an early morning we have not slept for about a week and before that two hours a day average for months - the norm in our "skeleton" regiment with just the tank crews - no attached infantry whatsoever (to be filled by reservists in need) but lots of training, maintenance, guard duty and "spit and polish" to fill the time.
Not ten minutes passed since the boss approved our tank - feeshly cleaned, dusted and of course rubbed with diesel - making it shine for a moment but attract dust like a magnet in a short while - and sitting cousily in the great beautifull trench - all 219 centimeters of it with even top of the turret below the ground level but ready to pop-up on inclined ramp front or back and shoot someone, less than a feet gap on each side - and we had a few minutes to catch a nap before other crews were done and the company was ordered to do some camp-setting work elsewhere...
Anyway, not ten minutes passed when a blind f#$ker that got lost on a march previous evening - no doubt all crew having fallen asleep while in the column and missing a turn - comes in on the way to his assigned spot in the line and drives his tank perpendicularly right across our engine compartment - nearly killing my mechanic (driver), totally crumbling our beautifull entrenchment and burying our tank and most terribly - shifting it sideways into stone-hard clay bank of the trench and somehow throwing off
both of our tracks in the process. Probably because of the relatively softer bottom which was fill rather than hard clay. Since we could neither drive nor possibly pull it out without doing damage to it - eved if the towing cables held and there was enough power in the whole company of tanks and mechanics knew how to tow properly - which is no simple trick - we spent almost two days day digging it out and extending a 2.5 meter deep hole around it with a shovel and a pickax so that we could clear the area and work on the tracks.
Remind me in a few days and I may post another story.
miko
