AMNA NAWAZ: And now a look at
one of the newest museums in
the town of Stow, Massachusetts,

housed in a space the size
of an airplane hangar.

It's home to some 50
fully restored tanks
and armored vehicles.

But the American Heritage
Museum has a mission of
remembrance, not glorification.

Special correspondent Jared
Bowen of PBS station GBH
in Boston has this story,

part of our arts and
culture series, Canvas.

JARED BOWEN: Step on
to the mezzanine of the
American Heritage Museum
and you survey what

seems, from a distance anyway,
like a sea of overgrown
toys. They are anything but.

ROB COLLINGS, President,
American Heritage Museum:
These are the vehicles,

the artifacts that
have the chronology
of how war came about.

JARED BOWEN: Down on the
floor, staring up at these
behemoths, you find a hulking

history of war, tank after
towering tank, tools of one
of mankind's darkest trades.

ROB COLLINGS: They were manned
by humans, by men, and women in
the case of the Soviets on the

Eastern Front. And all of
these have a remarkable
story of sacrifice, of
perseverance of resilience.

JARED BOWEN: Rob Collings
is the president of the
American Heritage Museum,
which opened in 2019.

Most of the tanks come
from the late collector
Jacques Littlefield

and are housed in a
65,000-square-foot
facility spanning this
country's war record.

In terms of tanks, it moves
from 1917 and the first

mass-produced American one
to the M1A1 in use today.

ROB COLLINGS: The collection
is the best in the world
of these artifacts.

There are at least a dozen
they are the only examples
on display in the U.S.,

and a handful are the
only one of their type
in the entire world.

They're all restored, and
they're running condition.

JARED BOWEN: So, almost any of
these tanks could roll out of
here into the field behind us?

ROB COLLINGS: Not only can
they. They do. In fact,
you can hear one right now.

(LAUGHTER)

JARED BOWEN: The source of
the thunderous rumbling that
interrupted our interview,

a Sherman tank from World
War II, making laps on a
field behind the museum.

ROB COLLINGS: These could land
on the beaches of Normandy and
drive all the way to Berlin.

And you think about the crews
at the time who were on these.
These were 18-year-old kids.

They weren't experienced.
They're young boys who
were scared of being
there. But, also,

they had these mechanical skills
coming off the farm. And it's a
lot like a very large tractor.

JARED BOWEN: In
non-pandemic times, the
museum typically offers
demonstration weekends and

World War II reenactments.
Helping to make those happen
is Dick Moran, whom we found

nearing the end of a
six-year-long restoration
of a Panzer 1, produced by
Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

DICK MORAN, Restoration
Laboratory Manager,
American Heritage Museum:
It was maneuverable.

It was small, two-man
crew. It was the best
of the best at the time.

What is really interesting,
if you want to look
up inside the turret,

you can see the machine
guns in here, the hatch, the
sights, ammunition boxes.

JARED BOWEN: And this is exactly
where the museum often returns,
to the deadly reality of war,

to the fact that these were
killing machines, not to
mention literal death traps.

Tanks were the most
obvious and often easiest
targets on battlefields.

This Jumbo, which lumbered
through the Battle of the Bulge,
still bears the scars of bombs

and bullets. As mighty
as they are, their crew
rarely survived assaults.

One day, we actually went
to a lecture. And this
gentleman stepped up and
he said: "Would you know

the life expectancy of
a tank crew?" And they
said that, if you go into
battle, it was 25 minutes.

COLIN RIXON, Lead Docent,
American Heritage Museum: And

we all sank into our
chairs. And we thought, wow.

JARED BOWEN: Colin Rixon
is the museum's lead docent
and a veteran of the British

Army who patrolled the Berlin
Wall during the Cold War.
He and a host of veterans

doubling as docents tour
visitors through exhibition
highlights like the Prime Mover,

an artillery vehicle, later
driven by actor Lee Marvin in
the film "The Dirty Dozen."

They visit the Higgins boat
that delivered infantry onto the
beaches of Normandy on D-Day,

and the so-called Churchill
Crocodile, which incinerated
anything and anyone in its path.

COLIN RIXON: This is
my father's uniform

that he wore when he
was commander on a troop
of Churchill Crocodiles
that went ashore.

JARED BOWEN: The personal
is paramount here.

Rixon says a steady stream of
veterans now make pilgrimages to
the museum with their families.

Is it good, is it bad as they
remember all of these things,
seeing all of these pieces?

COLIN RIXON: So, to many of
them, it brings a story to them.
It helps them, because they're

able to talk about it
now. That's the way to
get over it, because you
bottle it up inside you.

JARED BOWEN: And it's
where the museum leaves us,

with five men, part of
the U.S. Marine tank crew,
who saw their commander,

Marine Sergeant George
Ulloa, killed in an IED
explosion during the Iraq War.

In this video, they discussed
the attack in front of
his now restored tank.

MAN: It blew up.

JARED BOWEN: It's a very
cut-and-dry reminder that
everything here holds
a history of horror,

making this the rare
museum that, in one regard,
hopes to never expand.

ROB COLLINGS: A lot of people
will say coming in here, is this
a museum that glorifies war?

And by time they get to
the end, they realize
it's an anti-war museum,

because to totally
understand war, you will
never want it again.

For the "PBS NewsHour,"
I'm Jared Bowen in
Stow, Massachusetts.