When you just have to know

During last week’s outing to the Camp Rucker we drove along the North Rucker Canyon Road. This red earth dirt road is pretty good maintained by a grader and wide enough for two cars to pass one another with plenty of room on both sides, although sloped for water runoff. At a distance in the mountains we had spotted a white dot and as we drove on, there were two more that looked like Army tanks in the middle of nowhere. 

Benno cranked his head, almost busting his neck, as he stopped the truck by the road popping his eyes while trying to see if there actually were three Army tanks in front of the mountains. “Christ, those look like artillery tanks up there”. It seemed so. I now knew right away that we would end up there soon!

Back home he tried to find any information on the Internet about military equipment stored in the foothills of the Swisshelm mountain range, but could not find any. Having served his mandatory time in the West German Defence Force with an Artillery Battalion, he thought those tanks might be tracked howitzers and being trained on them he had a desire to know if those were it. He wanted to drive back to find out.  Ok then, I agreed to come along although not convinced we could get there.

So yesterday we packed a lunch and some coffee, you know the drill, and headed again for the Rucker Canyon Road on a mission to find the cannons. After the N Bar SS Ranch Rd, further on at mile marker 9 on the N Rucker Canyon Road, there was a dirt trail on the northern side through the bushes that looked like it could go up into the hills toward the tanks. We took it. Actually, I would have preferred to hike it because of all that prickly brush, but it looked pretty far. Benno just bumped the truck through the potholes and swerved along the winding trail all the way up the hill until we came to a small clearing where we parked the truck. Right in front of us was the first howitzer-tank and further down two more.

“Bah, those are mockups” were Benno’s words. “M 109 mockups,” to be more specific and they looked like made for the Military to be used as targets. Well, what did we expect? So instead of being ready to shoot, they were shot at as the multi holes in the metal revealed. One had gotten two full loads of buckshots and some slugs punching holes into the thin metal sheeting. Never the less, we traipsed through the bushes, around the tanks and I even climbed up on one (because I could) and I looked underneath to find out that it was hollow except for the structure.  I spotted a black and white coloured cat sitting by the third and farthest howitzer, but it took off before I had the camera ready.

While eating our packed lunch sandwiches in the truck we admired the beautiful view from up there. Then we drove back down again through all that brush but this time avoiding most of the potholes.

We still have no idea why those mock-up howitzers are in the mountains, who put them there and what are they being used for other than some hunters practice target shooting.

So that was our adventure of the mystery tanks. Back on the dirt road this young bull (steer) seemed to be lost on the wrong side of the fence. We could not help!

Thanks for visiting again!