It’s WWII all over again on the plains east of Colorado Springs.

Only this time, opposing forces are kitted out with mini-tanks and paintballs.

Rocky Mountain Tanks is one of only two locations in the U.S., and the only one in Colorado, where people can drive a tiny tank and blast paint through a barrel.

“We’ll have a safety briefing, and then you can have that family feud you’ve been waiting for,” Rocky Mountain Tanks co-owner Chris Mieras tells the group of 11 adults and teens celebrating a high school graduation.

After donning their neck coverings, helmets and goggles, the unrecognizable warriors get situated in their mini-tanks, some of them so short that only the crown of their head can be seen.

Half of the eight tanks bear German coloring. The other half are American. A target on the side is available should anyone want to tally up winning shots afterward.

Mieras instructs the Germans to make their way onto the 2-acre battlefield and find a place to hide behind the stacks of barrels, wood structures and other obstacles and ambush the Americans. The four adults behind the wheels of the adorable German tanks give a thumbs up. Their hoppers brimming with light blue paintballs, they’re ready to do battle.

Their American opponents cautiously maneuver onto the field, operating the handles of their tanks forward and backward, left and right, and stop to maneuver their turret toward a foe and fire off their white paintballs.

Mieras and Rocky Mountain Tanks co-owner Curtis Fox climb inside their Humvee and hide out from the warfare. Both have been victims of the sting of an errant paintball.

“We’re yelling at them, ‘shoot him, shoot him, he’s got his back exposed,'” Mieras said. “We’re just having a hoot.”

“Someone asked how often I play,” Fox said. “I don’t. I played once. But it’s so much fun what we do. We watch the people with a smile on their faces.”

“We want to use these vehicles that were meant for war and use them for laughter and joy,” Mieras said. “You get to do something you only experience in museums or online videos.”

And it’s not just mini-tanks. As you drive down the dirt road to Rocky Mountain Tanks, past the Pikes Peak Gun Club, you notice a bunch of military vehicles staggered about between old buildings and start to wonder. And if you arrive before anyone else, while the prairie wind blows, and the quiet roars, you start to wonder if the 1984 film “Red Dawn,” about a group of teens fighting the Soviets in a Colorado town during the Cold War, is happening in real time.

But then the happy-go-lucky Mieras comes tootling back from the battlefield in a mini-tank, where he’s been preparing for today’s family feud.

Mieras and Fox have accumulated a 15-vehicle fleet of Cold War tanks and WWII military vehicles, most of which customers can drive. Two laps around their half-mile course will run you $200.

Paintball is the cheapest item on the menu, clocking in at $75 per person per paintball battle, and the priciest, most bucket list-worthy item is crushing a car. You get to drive Monty, the 18-ton FV 434 armored recovery vehicle, over a car, taking about three passes to ensure a thorough demolition.

Last year, a woman bought a car-crushing package for her fiancé, and after he was done, they pulled the tank on top of the crushed car and signed their marriage certificate.

“The car costs us $250. We don’t own it,” Mieras said. “It’s just to get it here. We crush it, and the company takes it back, and they scrap it. We have to drain the oils and fluids out of the car.”

Fox, an avid WWII history buff, and Mieras, a self-described “grease monkey,” are a perfect business match: “I’m good at mechanics. He’s good at the history. Together we make a good person,” Mieras said.

The two men opened the business about a year ago on property rented from another buddy. Mieras and the landlord once had a popular YouTube channel, “Going Ballistic,” where they took turns shooting and blowing stuff up on the same land Mieras and Fox now use for their tanks.

Before Rocky Mountain Tanks, Fox owned Mountain Fox Tank Corp, home to some of his vehicles, including Bonnie, the White Motor Company M16 multiple gun motor carriage, and Warthog, the M1151 high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle.

His fascination with the time period goes back to his youth, when he fell in love with armored vehicles. As an adult, he lived in Europe for 15 years, where he regularly heard tales about WWII.

“WWII is so real,” Fox said. “Neighbors were remembering when the Germans were bombing London, and one said as a kid they’d take turns standing on the roof during bombings, and if an ember landed on the roof we’d have to run and sweep it off so it didn’t start the house on fire.”

Another time, a Belgian man told him his parents hid a GI in their basement when he was a kid, and the soldier gave him a bar of chocolate, which endeared him to Americans.

“That kind of history started getting me interested,” Fox said. “I love giving the history and telling people stuff they never knew about WWII. It was our greatest time; the people in the war were fascinating. The stories that people accomplished are crazy.”

Also available to drive are a Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251, a WWII German half-tracked armored personnel carrier; a Jeep G503; GMC’s CCKW, also known as Jimmy; and the armored personnel carrier OT-64 SKOT, though the latter isn’t available yet to drive.

“We’re making sure everything is safe. The brakes need TLC,” Mieras said. “The only problem is you can’t go to O’Reilly’s and find parts. Sometimes I have to find parts in the Czech Republic or England or find other people who have collections who will sell stuff.”

“That’s the big expense,” Fox said. “Not buying them, but keeping them running.”

Some of the vehicles have even been featured in film and TV, such as Amazon Prime Video’s American dystopian alternate history series, “The Man in the High Castle.”

“They all have their own story,” Fox said. “Where else do you get to touch them and climb on them? I don’t fix them up to be a museum piece. I fix them up so people can drive them.”

Details

Rocky Mountain Tanks, 2350 S. Franceville Coal Mine Road, 719-460-3018, rockymountaintanks.com