In The Shark Book, we devoted an entire chapter, “Hard Corps Drunks: The Few, The Brave, The Blotto” to the exploits in liquid form of those in uniform – among them a young recruit nearly blinded while playing a boozy game of “fireball hockey” [it’s aptly named] at an Army base, and a navy man whose fecal foray onto shore left a bad impression, and a bad smell in town.

But possibly the most shocking of all of these, or at least the one that you would expect the firing squad to start tuning up for, was the sale of a tank by Russian army forces to their Chechen enemies for around 8,000 bucks after the two opposing sides voted for peace by laying down their weapons and drinking their faces off together for an afternoon. That story and another about a Russian soldier who stole a dinghy from the merchant ship he was on and nearly perished at sea in violent weather just to procure some vodka on land are both instructive preludes to the following.

The cold Russian winters no doubt gave the soldiers manning a tank in the Ural mountains a hankering for some liquid warmth, and they stopped off in a nearby village to procure a couple of bottles of vodka for the journey. Fortunately, some quick-thinking citizen had his mobile phone at the ready to catch the aftermath: after picking up the booze, the apparently drunk driver then got back into the tank and proceeded to crash it into a nearby house.

A lenient Army colonel made the following comment on the incident: “Of course, there were violations but the crew acted in good faith to catch up with its unit.” That the crew stopped off in this village to fuel up in such a manner was something he did not touch upon in his statement.

The video is below, and while neither of us, unless the hour is late and we’re drinking the good stuff, can speak much Russian, here is what we guess was said at the start of it:

Driver: I got it! Couple of bottles of the cheap stuff. Bootleggers eh! (Laughs and drunkenly fishes through his pocket for his keys).

Other soldier: Say, are you alright to drive? Maybe I should take over while you get some sleep.

Driver: Nonsense! I’m fine! You’re such a worry wort! I barely had anything to drink, besides, I had a heavy lunch. No problem!

Other soldier: Wait! Too fast!

(Screams from the person whose house has just underwent impromptu renovations)