A tree, a voice and some smalls

Arnold Schwarzenegger telling Jimmy Fallon about when he was a tank driver in the Austrian army aged 18:

"I remember one time we were on manoeuvre and it was 12 midnight and we broke for what they call lunch… But we decided, my friend who had the tank M60 next to me, which was a more modernised tank, I said to him: ‘Let’s see who is faster down this hill.’ And so we took off. We drove down this hill, at least 40 miles an hour, just downhill in the middle of the night.

We didn’t see where we were going, we were just crushing through trees and bushes and everything like this. But, by the time we came down to the bottom – I beat him even though he had the more modern tank – I realised the whole infantry, 15 guys who were stood on top of the tank, I totally forgot to tell them to get off the tank! So they were just holding on and then they were falling off and I heard the screams the whole time but just thought ‘what is going on here, who is screaming?’. All these guys were just falling off and by the time I got to the bottom there was no one on the tank anymore… and then of course by the time we got back we were punished. Heavily.

We had to crawl underneath the tank in the mud - it was thick mud – we had to crawl under the tank, up on top the tank, into the turret, down the bottom, out again, underneath the tank. We had to do this 50 times. I tell you, when you get full of mud you can’t move. After 25 times I couldn’t move anymore. It took me from 12 midnight to six in the morning to do these 50 reps. I was so exhausted I slept for 24 hours after that."

Welcome to Newsletter #15

A tale I read

A tale I heard

A tale I saw

A tale I wrote

A tail I like