A military museum that for the past eight years has displayed a tank driven by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a member of the Austrian army has returned the vehicle to the California governor at his request.

"I'm not upset a bit," Warren Motts, founder and director of Motts Military Museum, said Tuesday. "I'm pleased we had the opportunity to have it and let people see it. It was neat to have a Hollywood connection."

Motts said Schwarzenegger acquired the M47 American-made tank from the Austrian government and had it shipped to Florida. He transported it to a Columbus shopping mall in 1999 when he opened a Planet Hollywood restaurant there.

Schwarzenegger lent the tank to the museum, located in Groveport, Ohio, in 2000.

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, said the governor plans to store the tank at a private location.

"He's going to have it closer to home, in California, so he can enjoy it," McLear said.

Schwarzenegger entered the army in 1965, at a time when one year of military service was compulsory in Austria.

In his autobiography, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder," Schwarzenegger tells about going absent without leave in the middle of basic training so he could compete in a European bodybuilding competition in Germany, which he won. He was caught when he returned to his base and spent seven days in jail before going to tank-driving school.

Driving a tank, he wrote, "appealed to the part of me that has always been moved by any show of strength and force."

Motts said the tank was removed from the museum Feb. 19, hoisted by crane onto a truck and transported to California.

"A piece of me is with that tank now," he said.