COMMISSIONED PIECE - NOT MY WORK

Original artist - Pyrosity

An absolute beast of a commission from the ever awesome Pyrosity! This one's another one of those commission with which I wanted to immortalize an awesome moment from my time in the army. And because Pyrosity's skills at drawing military tech are unmatched, I threw my idea his way.

The Story

We were having a simulated execise with practice ammo. 3 CVs and their supporting infantry against 2 CVs defending with their infantry. My vehicle was assigned to the defending group and we took positions and unloaded our infantry. After brawling with 2 attacking CVs and knocking one out in the process, we ran out of AP and were immobilized by a hit to our tracks. The tank commander ordered our crew to leave the vehicle and dismount the co-axial PKT machine gun. While I crawled through the emergency escape hatch the gunner and commander manhandled the PKT from its mount and gave it to me. The Gunner grabbed 2 cans of 200 from the ammo mounts and we took off into the forest and joined our infantry. We were almost shot as hostiles as we were coming from the direction of enemy, but the MG we brought with us was a welcome addition to the infantry's firepower. We stuck with the infantry and I fired the PKT while my gunner kept feeding ammo to the MG. We didn't have a shortage of targets and our wild firing confused the enemy and messed with their advance. It was a really akward gun to handle and fire with no proper handgrips or iron sights and on one occasion I had to fire it from the hip while displacing. Needless to say that it got HOT. Thank god for thick tanker gloves. After the battle was declared over, I had burned through most of the 2 ammo cans and the barrel was red-hot. Our crew was commended for setting an example with our excellent fighting spirit and not giving up despite our vehicle being shot from under us.

I've never felt more awesome in my life. The MG was a right pain to clean after the battle but oh, it was so worth it. A true hollywood moment that I never got the chance to pull off again.