As a former tank crewman with combat experience in four wars on three continents I can tell you exactly what a tank main gun round will do to a house. Whether it redecorates one home or passes through several -not two- depends on whether the loader has chambered a high explosive round or an antitank penetrating round such as SHOT, HYPERSHOT or SABOT. When I was ten years old the school I was in was hit by .50 caliber fire, which punched through the concrete block exterior wall of the classroom across the hall from ours, through the wall with the hallway, through our hallway wall and the blackboard with the arithmetic questions for which I had failed to complete my homework and lucked out on getting caught [Yay!] and through our exterior wall, which was mostly glass windows, which chunks of our wall and blackboard pretty well opened. That was in 1958 Cuba, and that was the *good guys* Batista National Police returning fire directed at them from behind our school. When people talk silliness about *school shootings* you might imagine that I have a bit more of a first-hand experience than a good many of the blue-sky theorists.
NOBODY knows how fighting an armed organized invasion would shake out. I hope I never have to.
Nobody? Nobody at all? The Finns have a pretty good idea; in November of 1939 a Million and a half Soviet troops invaded their country, and their army only had a quarter-million men, 32 tanks and 114 aircraft. It was the coldest Winter of the century and the initial Russian force had been in their Summer dress uniforms, having been told they'd be welcomed as Socialist Heroes by the cheering throngs of Helsinki at their victory parade in a couple of weeks. Instead, four months later, the half-million survivors returned to their pismire empire and let the politicians try to steal what their military could not. In the words of one Finnish volunteer Maxim gunner of the period: They are so many and our country is so small- Where will we bury them all?
And, BTW, the Serbs who endured the April-May NATO bombing and occupation of the *former Yugoslavia* have a pretty good idea.
