Let’s be clear about this: Tanks are the alpha predator of the battlefield. And yet, over the years, they have gradually become outmoded; at least that is what I thought until this month.
My father volunteered to fight for the Allies in the Second World War at the age of 17, within a day of the war being declared. He lied about his age as they only took men over 18. He left the country within 24 hours and returned to SA six years later. He spent most of the war as an infantryman in the Egyptian desert, but finished the latter part of the war in a Sherman tank as a radio operator, fighting up the Italian peninsula.
It was during one of these trips that he showed me some scrape marks on an old Italian monument that he said were made by his tank sliding on the cobblestone streets of Rome. And then once, we visited the Imperial War Museum in London, which was exhibiting a Sherman tank, and he was delighted to see his old chariot. We clambered into the tiny interior, where he showed me his seat next to the radio. I could have asked a million questions, but didn’t.
So why is it such a huge step change that the US and Germany have decided to provide these tanks to the Ukrainian forces? The US and Germany, particularly, have been cautious about escalating the war, which explains their reticence in providing Ukraine with offensive weapons like tanks. But they also don’t want a stalemate to emerge along the existing lines of occupation. What they want, it is now clear, is for Ukraine to win.
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