Meet Tank Gunner | A retired combat decorated cavalry soldier & an almost famous author of nine books at age 85.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tank Gunner and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tank, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
My current business is writing.

I’ve published a blog.

War Stories of an Armed Savage, has 200 non-fiction war stories and 350 pictures, images, and graphics about me and my combat two assignments in Vietnam.
I’ve published nine books.
PROMPTS and PROMPTS TOO are books of short stories (there are two winners in an international short story contest in each book.
THE REDEEMER, PALOMINO, PORKY BAYCANN, and LUCINDA JONES are the immensely popular series of historical fiction novels about memorable characters living in the rural town of Palomino, Texas.
COOKIE JOHNSON, REVEREND RIPPLE$ BUILDING FUND, and RIGORS OF REVENGE are character driven stories about love and mishaps.
In 2009, my son, Rich, found four combat operational reports I had written in 1969. As Commanding Officer (CO), Troop D, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam it was my duty to record what the cavalry troop did every day, 24/7.
I had told our sons, Rich and Rob, about the troop, but the daily entries I had written – a few sentences with radio call signs of soldiers, sergeants, and officers, with grid coordinates, and combat action – brought back images, terrain, and situations long forgotten.
Every day the troop had missions to accomplish, but the daily entry was a snapshot for the historical record.
I knew the rest of the story.
I knew the who, what, when, where, why, and how – so I began elaborating, clarifying, and correcting the historical events I had recorded 40 years earlier
I wrote and edited for more than a year. I thought I was finished, and I didn’t know what to do with the stories I had fashioned from the operational reports’ daily entries and memory.
A continuing education brochure appeared in the mail and while flipping pages I found a creative writing course and enrolled in the upcoming semester.
Capn Lee Sneath, a former newspaper managing editor, public relations executive, and award winning advertising executive was the instructor. Capn Lee is also a certified sailboat Captain.
His beginner’s course taught writers the basics of the craft using classroom prompts.
I bragged I had written many stories and brought seven to my third class.
Capn Lee said my stories read like reports but encouraged me to stick with him so he could help turn my “reports” into interesting non-fiction stories. He suggested I create a blog for my stories.
I did not know what a blog was, or how to spell it. But I did it.
As I developed my brand as Tank Gunner and my business as an author, Capn Lee guided me into the business world of book signings of my nine books.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My professional life and career involves all four categories (Business, Professional, Creative, Other) for “Your Work”.

Business
I was a motorcycle rider for 60 years. As a cavalry soldier, I steeped myself in the Plains Wars period – 1850s – 1870s, studying strategy and tactics by Native American warriors and United States Cavalrymen.
On my Honda GoldWing, I toured the states.
I stood in the village sites and saw life of the tribes, imagined the ritual dances and listened to drumbeats, tasted smoke from the cook fires, heard anxious horses whinny, walked and studied the terrain, and smelled the acrid scent of rifle gunpowder.
My red GoldWing was my cavalry mount.
Wylie Coyote was my passenger, co-pilot, and riding companion.
My motorcycle steered me to a motorcycle safety class, and it was there I discovered I wanted to be a motorcycle safety instructor – later known as a Rider Coach.
At age 60 I earned certification as a Texas motorcycle safety instructor/Rider Coach and created my own business. I contracted my teaching/instructor services to several motorcycle education sponsors in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Over a ten year period I trained/coached 5,000 beginning and experienced motorcycle riders how to ride safely on streets and highways. Not a single student – male or female, young or older – had a serious mishap on a motorcycle after training with me. I also trained, coached, and mentored dozens of new and experienced motorcycle safety instructors.

Professional
Joined the United States Air Force and after training as an Air Policeman I was stationed at Orly Field in Paris, France. For a 19 year old Texas kid, it was a wonderfully thrilling culture shock.
I met my beautiful girl at a dance and two years later asked her mother for her daughter’s hand.
Permission to marry was denied.
Adding to that setback, the Air Force was downsizing. I was part of its RIF (Reduction-In-Force) and was unceremoniously shipped back to Texas.
After being honorably discharged, I pumped gas in San Antonio for about nine weeks before writing my girl a letter.
Asked if she would marry me if I came for her and waited two weeks for her reply.
Her note was short and to the point – “We’ll see.”
No money, only way back to Europe was enlisting in the United States Army, Europe Unassigned.
After months of training, I arrived at Camp King near Frankfurt, Germany. During my company commander’s orientation, I asked Captain Spencer for a 7 day furlough.
“You just got here, Son,” was his reply.
After hearing my explanation he granted my leave.
I took a Frankfurt to Paris overnight train to my Sweetheart.
I had returned for the girl I left behind.
We’ve been married 63 years.
Graduated from 7th Army Non-Commissioned Officer’s Academy in Bad Tölz, Germany as a Private First Class, selected for Infantry OCS (Officer Candidate School), Fort Benning, Georgia, commissioned Second Lieutenant Armor, completed jump school and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky where I became a Jumpmaster and completed over 70 parachute jumps…
My family and I served our nation for 27 years. Families deserve, but rarely receive, the recognition and thanks for their service and support for the service member and America.
Following retirement from the military, a 50 billion dollar a year international petroleum corporation brought me on board to train staff and managers in the art of communication, time management, and leadership.
Eventually, I was promoted and appointed Director of Executive Development and Succession Planning for Caltex.
I coached Chairmen, Presidents, Vice Presidents, and General Managers in the art of leadership to support their managers and staffs to professionally and personally be the best.

Creative
Capn Lee had suggested I create a blog.
I didn’t know what a blog was or how to spell it, but found Google blogspot.
I tediously arranged and posted 200 non-fiction stories and organized 350 photos, images, and graphics for the blog.
I called them War Stories.
As Delta Troop Commander, my radio call sign was Armed Savage Six.
War Stories of an Armed Savage is in 15 parts.
Parts 1 through 13 each contain 15 stories with photos, graphics, and images.
Parts 14 and 15 are photo albums with captions for each photo, graphic, and image.
Capn Lee assigned a prompt at the end of each class. We used the prompt to write our story for the next week’s class. Capn Lee edited our work.
After a year, he suggested I use some of my non-fiction war stories and his prompts to write fiction.
I did, and with the great help of my classmates and Capn Lee’s editing, my stories are educational and entertaining.
“Write a book,” was the challenge.
“I don’t know how to write a book,” was my response.
“Use your short stories. It will be a book of your short stories.”
I published PROMPTS a collection of stories at the age of 76.
I published PROMPTS TOO another collection of stories at age 77.
Two stories in Prompts and two stories in Prompts Too won in an international short story contest in 2018 and 2019.
That’s how I earned the tag award winning author.
Using the meet-cute prompt of two people bump into each other (the movie When Harry Met Sally is “meet-cute”), I wrote and published my first novel, COOKIE JOHNSON, at age 78. It is a Vietnam historical fiction story of love and war.
At 79, the prompt about a rancher sitting atop a gorgeous horse resulted in my immensely popular WWII historical fiction novel, Palomino. In the summer of 1943, three German POWs from Rommel’s Afrika Korps come to live and work in Palomino, Texas, a small rural town of 700 people.
My town remained the setting for:
PORKY BAYCANN, a coming of age historical fiction novel, at age 80;
THE REDEEMER, exonerated, ex-con Dr. Pearly Gates comes to work in the Palomino hospital, at 81;
LUCINDA JONES, a spunky red head coming to work in the Palomino Press before pursuing a journalism degree in Austin, at age 84.
The Redeemer, Porky Baycann, and Lucinda Jones are second, third, and fourth in the series of adorable and memorable characters living in Palomino.
In between Porky Baycann and Lucinda Jones, I wrote two other novels:
REVEREND RIPPLE$ BUILDING FUND, a story about Bobby Ripples, thief, ex-con, and pretend preacher, at age 82;
RIGORS OF REVENGE, the story of an Army Colonel harboring revenge for 50 years finally having the chance to return to Vietnam to find and kill an enemy who murdered the Colonel’s sergeant, at 83.
I’m working on PALOMINO dénouement, my tenth book, which is the final chapter of Palomino.

Other
The pen name Tank Gunner does not immediately attract readers to an author who writes strong women and men character driven stories about love and life.
Upon completion of my second assignment in a combat unit in Vietnam in 1970, the Army sent me to college to complete my bachelor degree.
At University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington I enrolled in a creative writing class.
On a small, portable typewriter, using stock and carbon paper along with jars of white out, I wrote a 75,000 word novel.
Using Writer’s Digest, I shopped WHERE IS THE BATTLEGROUND to over a hundred agents and publishing houses.
Like Stephen King, I had a big nail for my rejection slips.
One editor, who helped James Jones publish From Here To Eternity, wrote in his letter that my story did not have the power it needed for publication. It was a thrill to get his handwritten note but disappointing because I had no clue what he meant.
Undaunted, I wrote a two act play over a weekend and Monday morning brought the farce to my university creative writing professor.
After reading the play she suggested I take it the university’s theater director. She made the call and he said bring it over.
I sat at the side of his desk and watched with anxious eyes as he read my work.
His roaring laughter at all the right places was indeed pleasing and encouraging.
ANY NAME BUT SMITH opened the 1971 University of Puget Sound theater season.
My play received rave reviews including a fantastic review by a theater critic with the Tacoma News Tribune.
I used my $105 royalty to purchase an electric typewriter in the Fort Lewis, Washington Post Exchange (PX).
Upon graduation with a BA in Business Management, I was assigned as the S-3 (Operations Officer) of the only tank battalion in the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis.
Reassigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky two years later, my job was to write “how-to” Soldiers’ Manuals for tank crews.
While there, I approached the managing editor of The Turret, the United States Army Armor Center and School’s weekly newspaper and submitted a satirical story about a veterinarian who accidentally euthanized a friend’s dog. Instead of a dog, my victim was a frog.
That began a two year run of a column of satire that was published in 24 weekly military newspapers.
I used the by-line T. Gunner. At the Armor Center and School everyone would translate T. Gunner as a tank gunner.
Then writing took a back seat to other assignments, career, and life until Rich found the operational reports in 2009 on The Texas Tech University Vietnam Center and Archive, and I found a creative writing course with a great instructor and supportive classmates who’ve published their own books.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
A Fort Worth rodeo Fort Worth Stock Yards.
Reunion Tower.
A Tex-Mex cafe
Half Price Books stores.
Of course, Dealey Plaza..

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Front and center is my loud and loving Shoutout to my wife, the girl I love and cherish, who supported our family through all of the trials and tribulations of a career soldier. We’ve enjoyed successes and disappointments, highs and lows, ups and downs, and survived all of the various abundant human and financial hardships and sacrifices that military families endure.
My girl is a champion who managed family needs and cared for our sons under frighteningly stressful separations during my assignments with combat units in Vietnam.
A hearty Shoutout to our two sons who lived through disappointments of losing friends and the excitement of making new ones as young children of a military family. They grew into fine young men as we moved from one comfortable spot to an unknown posting. Both have made us proud of their individual achievements and successes.
An humble Shoutout to each soldier and officer I served, lived, laughed, and cried with during my 27 years of military service. I am proud and honored they let me be in their ranks, prepared to stand in harm’s way to protect our country and its citizens from aggressors and dictators.
A thankful Shoutout to Capn Lee for his continuing mentorship and patient reading and editing hundreds of thousands of words with a thousand variations of punctuation.
My creative writing classmates duly deserve my appreciative Shoutout to for their encouragement and support during the writing and publishing of my nine books.
This grateful Shoutout to my readers and fans who took time from busy lives to read and enjoy my stories and books is publicly recorded here.

Website: https://tankgunnersix.blogspot.com/ and  https://armedsavagesix.blogspot.com/

Facebook: Tank Gunner

Other: :https://voyagedallas.com/interview/rising-stars-meet-tank-gunner-of-duncanville/

Image Credits
Captain Tom Mahoney