Arduous.

This is coolbert:

From the collected works of the Soviet defector Victor Suvorov [Vladimir Rezun] a quick and dirty description of the "arduous" task of merely loading ammunition into a main battle tank. An effort not for the weak or faint of hear. Germane also to the previous blog entry:

 "The life of an office-cadet at tank school is exceptionally arduous. Anyone who experienced, if only once, what it means to load forty-three projectiles into a tank, to change a tank-track (which weighs one and one half tons) or just to sit for three hours behind the controls a T-55 [Soviet era Cold War Era tank], will understand to the full what it is really like to spend four years at a tank training school."

"At the same time the fighting vehicles had to have their ammunition replenished. Each tank shell weighs 30 kilograms [66 pounds]. Hundreds of them were brought up, two shells in a box. Each box had to taken off its transport, the shells taken out and the packing removed from each one. Then each one had to be cleaned, the factory's protective grease removed, and the shell placed in the tank. Cartridges [12.7 mm Dushka heavy machine-gun I believe?] also came in boxes, 880 to a box [100 pounds per box], and they had to be loaded into belts. In each machine-gun belt there were 250 rounds. The belts had to b e loaded into their magazines, and thirteen of them in every tank."

Regarding the biography of Suvorov as a child of eleven years entering the "Suvorov military cadet school" and for seven subsequent years educated to be an officer [a tank qualified commander] and if possible an ardent supporter and advocate of the Soviet communist system.

Let me reiterate. We are speaking in the context of merely loading ammunition onto a main battle tank. NOTHING more regarding maintenance, fueling, operating the tank in the field and/or emerging alive and victorious in combat!!

coolbert.