Danish Leopards in Helmand

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Danish Army Leopard 2A5 main battle tanks were deployed to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2014 as part of the Danish contribution to NATO’s ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mission. The purpose of this book is to tell the stories of the Danish tankers from the ‘turret hatch perspective’. Their tales are told as the soldiers relayed them to the author. The reader will therefore gain an insight into some very personal stories about the experiences of crew members while they were ‘at work’ in Afghanistan. This book gives the reader an insight into the otherwise very closed world of these specialist soldiers – the realm of the tankers. In order to be a tanker, the crew members have to meet stringent physical demands, have to be mentally stable, have to be able to multi-task in a manner that is hard to understand if you have not tried being a tanker, and also to have social skills that are higher than average. Four people form the crew of a Leopard 2A5 tank and naturally they spend countless hours together, both in and out of the tank. Thus, they need to be able to get along well, using their social skills as the glue which makes all the other roles of the commander, the gunner, the loader and the driver come together as a coherent crew. This is a crew that can handle a very complex machine, and excel in the deadly environment which was the habitat of the Leopard 2 in Afghanistan.