Sentimental Over Hogs : Military: Fifty-year anniversary of 1st Tank Battalion at Camp Pendelton is bittersweet with knowledge that the decorated tank outfit is to be decommissioned in budget cuts.

One thing’s for sure: Paul Young didn’t enlist in the Marine Corps to ride around in any tank. He wanted nothing to do with those supposedly slow-moving, cantankerous buckets of bolts. His heart was in the infantry.

But, after three years of standing on the ground, feeling the dirt rumble beneath his feet, witnessing the power and agility of Camp Pendleton’s big M-60 tanks, Young became a believer.

He re-enlisted, became a “tanker,” and went out and got himself a “hog.”

Tankers are what Marines call those who maneuver the camouflaged beasts of burden. And the tanks themselves, Young says, are called hogs--those big mud-wallowing barnyarders unleashed on a battlefield.

“It’s a feeling of power,” the 30-year-old sergeant said of his experience as tank commander, which includes a medal for valor in the Persian Gulf War. “The rounds you fire can penetrate any armor on the battlefield. And there’s not anything that can slow you down--no buildings, fences, trees. Nothing.

“Inside the tank, you know you can win any fight, go anywhere you want. Because they can’t stop you.”

On Friday, Camp Pendleton celebrated the 50th anniversary of its 1st Tank Battalion--the Marine Corp’s oldest and most-decorated collection of hogs ever to fight a war, its members say--from Pacific Theater to the Persian Gulf.

But the hour-long ceremony and military hymn-playing was tinged with a note of sadness. Because many knew this would probably be the last birthday bash for the 1st Tank Battalion.

Next year, the battalion and its 70 tanks will be decommissioned as part of the Pentagon’s downsizing of all branches of service, the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. defense establishment since the end of World War II.

At Camp Pendleton, that means about 1,000 Marines attached to the 1st Tank Battalion face transfer to either the Marine base at Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert or Camp Lejeune, N.C. The 1970s-era, M-60 tanks themselves will either be transferred or mothballed, making way for the state-of-the-art M1-1A tanks.

The expected summertime departure will leave Camp Pendleton without a home-based tank battalion. On Friday, the base prepared to say goodby, in effect, bidding “Tanks for the Memories.”

“It’s going to be a hell of a lot quieter around this place,” said Cpl. Donald Nixon. “Those tank tracks are going to be sitting empty for the most part. They might bring some tanks in now and then for training purposes. But it won’t be like having the 1st Battalion around.”

Some Marines said they didn’t mind the thought of a transfer--or the specter of further changes at the base. But the loss of their tank battalion will be like losing an identity--a casualty of peace, not war.

“Marines take transfers without question,” said Nixon, 25, a scout with the battalion. “But I know most of the guys would like to see the 1st Tank Battalion stick around.”

Not everyone, however, is mourning the departure of the tanks, the sight of which has long been a fixture for motorists along Interstate 5 as they rumbled along the tank trails that wrinkle the picturesque base.

Andrea McGuire, San Diego chapter director of the Sierra Club, said the 60-ton vehicles have run roughshod over the scrub environment at the base, but their removal comes too late to reverse any wildlife damage.

“The exercising of those tanks has already done whatever damage and destruction it’s going to do,” she said. “Removing them now won’t change that.”

The battalion’s bash, held on a base football field lined by a half-dozen menacing M-60s, came off more like a convention of “Motor Trend” magazine subscribers--with a decidedly military twist.

One by one, the speakers talked specifics--of engine capacity and turning ratios, as well as past battle glories of the “iron chariots”--as enraptured listeners dressed in green khaki uniforms oohed and aahed and nodded their heads in agreement.

Indeed, more than two generations after the battalion’s birth at the onset of World War II, military tanks have improved. They’ve gotten bigger, smarter, faster and more agile--as one tanker put it, “going from convertible Mustangs to regular Rolls-Royces.”

The old vision slots have given way to sophisticated periscopes and night sighting. They can launch bigger, more accurate, yard-long shells, and fire them farther. Other hogs are giant flamethrowers.

For tank commander Bryan Clark, a 24-year-old from Kansas City, just talking about tanks--those armor-plated, fire-breathing, shell-spewing, dust-kicking, off-road warriors--makes his eyes widen.

“They’re a blast--every motor-head’s dream,” he said. Back home, the mere mention of his tanker exploits has won him dates. And knowing pats on the backs from aging veterans.

“These things just bring out the little-boy gee-whiz in you,” he said. “I look at it this way--where else can a 155-pounder like me control 60 tons of steel beast?”

For the uninitiated, however, riding in an M-60 tank can be an experience akin to 1950s college students packing a telephone booth. Along with the tank commander, the driver, loader and gunner must share--and sometimes sleep--in a space the size of a crawl-in closet.

Rumbling along at 50 m.p.h., the stiff-suspensioned hogs bump along like baby carriages on some rocky backcountry road, Marines say. Gunners, who often cannot see the path ahead, compare the sensation to riding a roller-coaster while blindfolded.

And the tanks are loud--so loud that Marines must wear head gear. And that’s even when the vehicle’s 105-millimeter main gun is silent. Once they start pounding, it’s a sound jarring enough to invent a new type of Excedrin headache, tankers say.

“The guns will rattle your world,” said Lance Cpl. Curt Riley. “This contraption is, without a doubt, absolutely the loudest thing I’ve ever ridden in.”

There’s another reality to tanks--they’re dangerous. Riley said his instructors at military tank school warn tankers to expect at least one injury while working with their hogs.

He tells stories of Marines who had their toes or fingers crushed by the tank’s heavy-duty, 3-foot-wide tracks. And tankers suffer a condition known as tank-knees from the pounding of repeatedly leaping 6 feet to the ground.

“You have to remember that these things are hired killers,” Clark said. “And they don’t know friend from foe. That’s your job--to watch out that neither you nor anyone you know gets hurt.”

Most tankers nickname their hogs. A generation ago, they were named after girlfriends. In today’s era of Arnold Schwarzenegger, they might be known as Terminator. Or Jim Beam. Jack Daniels. Scrap Metal Nightmare.

On the battlefield, tanks are indeed nightmares.

In one day, as the tankers’ saying goes, a single hog can do more damage than a thousand-man infantry battalion would take a month to accomplish.

“To watch them coming at you--it’s just mind-blowing,” Cpl. Nixon said. “First, you feel the ground shake, then you hear their rumbling. And finally, you see them coming, lined up in a straight-line or T-formation.

“If they’re your tanks, it’s just a cold-cocked thing of beauty to see. It can bring tears to your eyes, one moving mass of intimidation, shock and firepower.”

And tanks can inspire heroics. Sgt. Young won the Bronze Star for bravery in the Persian Gulf War when he maneuvered his tank between Iraqi gunners and a U.S. Humvee personnel carrier until fellow Marines could dash for safety.

Several members of the battalion’s Bravo Company recalled the eerie skies over the Persian Gulf, so blackened by smoke from oil fires, that 9 a.m. seemed more like midnight. They remembered open-air desert rumbles and that strange, strange trip across an almost isolated Kuwait City airport.

Despite the desert heat, they knew safest place to be was in their tanks.

Master Sgt. James Graham, a 1st Tank Battalion member who bumped along in an old M-48 throughout the Vietnam War, said a tanker’s feeling of invincibility never leaves him.

“They’re like a Mike Tyson blow to the jaw, they come at you with speed and force,” said Graham, now captain of the battalion’s undefeated football team known as The Tankers.

“Inside, you know that, even if you don’t win the war, you’re going to wreak some havoc, cause some awesome damage. And, for a 19-year-old, fresh from high school, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime feeling to know you’re the baddest man in the valley.”

But the job of tanker comes with its superstitions. And they’ve got nothing to do with falling asleep on the job. They’re about eating apricots.

“It’s got something to do with some big battle in an apricot orchard where a bunch of guys got wiped out,” said Riley. “Apricots bring bad luck, period. You won’t catch me dead eating one in my tank.”