![]() ![]() A child drops her balloon by my feet and I kick it back to her, whereupon she promptly drops it again and we repeat the whole vicious cycle. An Afghanistan exhibition hosts a desert quad bike and maps of Helmand province, which a looping video of an army man with a posh voice tells us is all under control. The game’s booths are sandwiched into a room with about six giant tanks, including a weird one the Russians used for training – a big cross section cuts out the back of the turret, which makes the thing look as if it had gone to war with a Mech armed with a laser. The glee of crushing soldiers on the streets of St Petersburg.īy now we’ve done a lap of the place and find ourselves in the room that houses the World of Tanks demo. The mammoth tanks from Red Alert roaring toward an enemy base, the cheat code for the tank in GTA 3, the flap of the machine shop in Company of Heroes fluttering in the wind as sparks fly out, the futile dud-dud-dud of the onboard machine gun in Battlefield 1942 as a Spitfire drops its load. Images of tanks frolic in my unconscious mind. He asks it earnestly, which is nice considering the word ‘pacifist’ is often said in the same tone of voice as the word ‘paedophile’ or ‘Jar Jar Binks’. “I don’t even like war.” I feel like it might even be true. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I confess to the other journo. Meanwhile, in the sea, a US infantryman walks professionally on the water’s surface with his head missing. It is possible he has not noticed the invasion happening twenty feet to his left. A single German soldier looks surprisingly calm as one of the machines aims its turret his way. Tiny model Nazis hold their hands on their heads on the beach as US tanks roll onto the sands from special landing craft. We stumble across a miniaturised scene of the D-Day landings. I forget the exact name of this device, but I believe it may be called the ARRGGH. Think of a combine harvester made out of medieval maces spun at oh-fuck miles per hour. It’s basically a big spinning cyclone of death made out of heavy iron chains with balls on the end. We also see the thresher attachment used in the same game by the US army to clear landmines and hedgerows. Very unlike the terrifying kamikaze bastards in the game. It was slow, prone to flipping upside-down, had too short a wire and was generally pretty useless. It was used by the German army in WWII mostly to clear minefields but also against enemy tanks “on rare occasions”. ![]() It’s a small vehicle that was remotely controlled via a wire and could be filled with up to 100kg of TNT. We see the Goliath, which was used in Company of Heroes. In the other room, lurks what I think is an enormous German Tiger tank. “The one with the sign above it that said ‘Nature’s armour plating?’” He says that he did, then tells me about his pet tortoise called Tilly, whom he assures me is most definitely not like a tank but is cantankerous. ![]() “Did you see the tortoise shell in the last room?” I ask the fellow journo walking alongside me through the museum. I believed this for approximately one year. Remember that scene in Band of Brothers when they’re fighting over a couple of hedgerows the whole episode? And then a tank battalion roll in and all the American soldiers joyfully start crying “Sherman!” When I first saw that I thought that the guy sticking out of the first tank was called Sherman and that Sherman was the ‘king’ of the tanks, who had come to rescue them. Like I say, I’m at a loss here because I’m not really into tanks all that much. Nevertheless, people come from all over Europe to see tanks from throughout military history and to buy souvenirs like Airfix models, or soap. The festival takes place near the sleepy settlement of Wool, which is a bit like holding an NRA meeting in a town called Carebear, or a nuke parade in a village called Softmint. Tanks are put on display and even rolled out onto a specially built course to rollick around and pretend to shoot things. The tank museum is the setting for Tankfest, the annual festival of large, manoeuvrable killing machines held in the south of England. I feel a strange kinship with the little chopper. Beneath it a placard reads, “What is a helicopter doing in a tank museum!?” and then goes on to explain the entire history of this particular helicopter EXCEPT the reason it is in a tank museum. But there is a small helicopter, which is disconcerting. There are no tanks on the ceiling, which is a relief. I walk around hoping to find a Russian tank which inside houses different, smaller tanks, so that I can act bewildered and amused even though I previously suspected its existence. Tanks in the lobby, tanks on the lawn, tanks in the gift shop. I have honestly no idea what I’m doing here. ![]()
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