Part Three: Saumur

...The Musée des Blindés at Saumur. I forgot to take a picture of the outside, so here is a stock one from our files.

WARNING!

This following bit is pretty much all just pictures of tanks. Tanks, tanks and more tanks, interspersed with the odd self-propelled gun, tank-destroyer or softskin truck. So if you don't like that kind of thing then I'd just skip to the next chapter if I were you.

A rather splendid French behemoth from the Great War. Don't remember the name of it.

The interior of the same.

And again, this time showing the engine.

More of the same type of thing.

And one of those cute little Renaults that everybody loves.

Sickly, looking like a hobo as usual, standing by an American truck. I think it's a GMC.

It is actually Sickly's sincere wish to become a hobo when he leaves school. Not sure what the careers officer would make of that. But he wants to be hobo nobility, with a cracked monocle, bent top hat, and fingerless mittens. So he would at least be in a management position and in charge of other hobos.

Good that he has some ambition.

Told you it was a GMC.

Even cuter than a Renault FT 17, it's a little Goliath! They'd be great for village fetes. You could put a toddler on one, and the older kids could remote control it around a maze of straw bales or something. There would be a prize for the quickest time, and the toddler would enjoy the ride. A perfect scheme. I can't see any downside to it.

Oh yeah, the Goliath is packed with explosives. Forgot about that...

A Hetzer. Slightly less cute, but still cute and wee.

A Mark III. Not cute at all, really.
And grey is just so Early War. Come on, people! This is the mid-Forties now.

The business end of a Mark IV. Dunno what letter it is. I am incapable of remembering such nerd-like detail.

Wouldn't want to be the chap who had to put all that Zimmerit paste on.

I wonder what zimmerit paste tastes like? I might try it in my sandwiches tomorrow instead of Princes Sardine and Tomato.

Ooh, a Tiger. Everybody's favourite Nazi tank.

Except maybe for the Panther.

I don't think the criss-cross zimmerit look is as good as the tiny little bars.

Big daddy Tiger.

And again from the front.

Ah, I know what this one is without having to look it up. A Sturmpanzer IV Brummbär. I know that because I made the Tamiya kit of it when I was a teenager. Even put the Zimmerit on by hand with milliput. I was rather pleased with it. Then when I was a slightly older teenager I converted it into a Space Ork Landship for 40K Rogue Trader. What an idiotic thing to do.

Nope. It's no good. I've forgotten what that one's called.

That's Italian. I know that much. Probably a Vespa or a Lambretta.

I think this one is a Ferrari.

A Nazi hotdog stand.

A French armoured car, complete with a large "drop bomb here" target on the bonnet.

Another French tank. This one looks like it can't make its mind up which World War it wants to be in.

Some jolly Resistance types. Or terrorists, as we call them today.

Be my Valentine.

A Matilda. Named after the book by Roald Dahl, presumably.

A Sherman. Ironically they were manufactured in Atlanta, Georgia.

(Actually I just made that up.)

A Churchill, parked in front of a picture of ... De Gaulle. Hmm.

The turret looks too VSF to be taken seriously as a World War II tank.

And now, the Soviet Section. Sickly, brimming over with youthful idealism and revolutionary fervour, respectfully asks you to click on THIS LINK (right click and select Open Link in New Window) while looking at the next few pictures.

He'd also like it if you'd stand for the duration of the song.

De dum,

de dumpty, dumpty,

dum, dum...

...De dum,

de dumpty, dumpty,

dum...

Still listening? You'd better be.

Hmm...

(Looks at watch)

Goes on a bit, doesn't it?

Okay, you can turn it off now. We're back with the NATO stuff.

I don't know about you, but I find post-war tanks a bit dull. Impressive as they may be from a technical, performance standpoint, they just don't really do anything for me.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that tanks just aren't as interesting after 1918.

But I think I'm in quite a small minority on this.

But not the Merkava. I really like the Merkava.

Even though it's a tank from the useless and boring 80s, it still looks like a tank from the future, even today.

I don't know quite what this was doing a museum des Blindés (as it couldn't be less armoured if it tried), but there we are.

So it's a wooden car. It had a wooden chassis, wooden wheels, and a wooden engine.

Guess what? It 'wooden' go.

Sorry. That joke is brought to you from a 1970s school playground, somewhere on the Welsh border.

*

Anyway, time to move on again. No sign of our contact. Must have got cold feet again.

Damn you, Hulk Hogan!