Written in one hour, twenty minutes.

No real hurt intended to Russians, Finns or  panzergulo

For this weeks Thursday prompt.

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When I lived in Soviet Russia, I was a tank commander.
Training was very hard, every day we were required to lift the tanks and carry them onto the field with our bare hands, then assemble them completely. The first team to be done was allowed to urinate on the other teams before their tanks were done. This made it very wet for many of us who were slow in the head from beatings and our inflated egos.
Once the tanks were assembled, we must drive them to the fuel station with very little fuel, otherwise we had to push them to the station. At the station Vladmir would fill the tank. He was very slow and would try and clean the windshield on the tank. There are no windshields on a tank! We would throw bottles at him and make animal noises in spite of his tries. The diesel fuel smelled very bad, but some of us would mix it with the vodka to make the days supply last longer.
On the training field, we would fire electronic rounds at each other on the field. These rounds were made from old computer parts and did no damage, but if someone was daft and standing on the outside hull of the tank they would likely die from the pieces.
When the days training on the field was over, we would go back to base and disassemble our tanks again. This was an easier task and done with more leisure, but if one had sense, he would make the parts in the boxes so that he could put them back together easily. If someone was smart and finished early during the morning exercises, he would pee in the other tank team’s boxes so they would be unfit for the parts and would shed like paper in the afternoon.
Because I was a commander, I had many luxuries that the others did not. I was allowed to sleep at night in a bed. If the others wanted to sleep, they had to be knocked unconscious, otherwise they were to work in the factory for the tanks. Also I could give out the days supply of vodka and rations, if a man was uncouth I could take away his vodka as punishment so the headaches would plague his day and fix his attitude.
When training was over, we were stationed in the North to guard the seacoast from invasions. Most days we played cards and drove our tanks to keep the boredom away. On days where the cold was unfit, we would have to push the tanks onto a big fire to melt the diesel and free up the frozen engine. If we left it on there too long, it would burn, with the man trying to starting it inside, who would have a very short time to jump out through the flames. The worst part of this is we would have to build another fire to get the other tanks going.
On the coldest winter nights we would have several men on each bed to keep warm. This method worked well but made for problems when beans were in the rations. To supplant this issue, some men opted to sleep in their hazard mask.
It was in the spring then, of the first year after my training that we had our first call to duty. The head command called that there was a fleet of tanks approaching across the ice, and that the submarines could not get to them, and the snow was too foul for aircraft to strike. Mother Russia called us to duty and we loaded the guns and prepared to fight, with grim faces, falling back onto our hard training. For once, our outpost would see action.
We lined the tanks across the beach in a fashion where we had the high ground, and waited, our hearts beating heavy and our eyes straining through the scopes into the falling snow. One hundred tanks in all. Hours passed, and we waited, with little word from the command.
Then we saw them. There were many more of them that us, two or three hundred perhaps. Command had no word as to who they were.
“Are they the Americans?”
“No… The Americans do not have tanks like that.”
“Are they from the Netherlands?”
“No… I see no smoke coming from the cabins.”
“Are they from Finland?”
“…”
“Commandant! Are they from Finland?”
“See for yourself.”
The lead tank had four treads, six guns and brilliant shine coming from its hull. It was plated in pure gold, and flew a giant Finnish flag. It sounded like a locomotive as its diesel rumbled away. Diamonds ran up and down its hull, and the cannons. All the other tanks halted, but the big one continued forward, it dashed through the snow as if it didn’t exist.
In turn, I steered my tank down the beach and onto the ice, to meet this tank. Fear grew greatly, it was obviously a superior machine. It stood as high as a two story house, and its Finnish flag flew high enough to catch the stiff wind that blew and bend the pole it was attached to. Our tanks stopped nose to nose, and through my scope I could see a hatch open.
It prompted me to do the same. The man in the other hatch was not a man at all, but a wolverine, dressed in a golden jumpsuit with a leather tankman’s helmet. He stood on the hull of his tank, clawed mitts on his hips, and looked down on me for a bit, and scanned the horizon with all of the tanks from our outpost. He looked for a long time, and I looked back at him, couched in the hatch of my rusty, worn tank. This went on for several minutes. I could hear them on the radio begging for information on the situation.
“Good work. Great little formation... I really enjoyed this. Keep up the good work.”
And he was back in his tank. The tank turned around, and headed back towards the white horizon, its Finnish flag blowing in the wind, followed in turn by the other Finnish tanks. Our tanks waited until they were gone, and we went back to the outpost, confused, but triumphant… Our show of strength had allowed the confrontation to pass without a shot fired.
We drank vodka in celebration, instead of boredom.