Chapter XXII (1)

FROM NIERGNIES TO THE ARMISTICE: CONCLUSION.

I.

In his recent book, ‘The Last Four Months, the End of the War in the West,’ General Sir Frederick Maurice describes how Marshal Foch, when asked by the statesmen at Versailles for his plan of countering the final German offensive, “answered by striking out three rapid blows with his right, with his left, and again with his right, following these by launching out a vigorous kick.”

The preliminary punches, begun on 18th July on the Ourcq, and ending with the American capture of the St Mihiel Salient in mid-September, were uniformly successful--successful, indeed, to a degree which even the Marshal himself can hardly have anticipated. The British armies, having lost 300,000 men and 1000 guns, with immense accumulations of material, within four or five weeks, accomplished the most extraordinary recovery in history, and played the leading _rôle_ in this counter-offensive. I do not know what effect the tremendous disasters of March and April had upon opinion in England, but I know that they abated in no way the illogical conviction of the ordinary Englishman in France, that we were bound to win the war in the long-run; and this self-confidence, based neither on reason nor on knowledge, innate, matter-of-fact, and often very irritating in prosperity, was an unrecognised inspiration of our resistance and reaction. It took extraordinary form at times. I remember how, when three British armies out of four were in full retreat or fighting for their lives, and when people in Calais and Boulogne were packing up for flight, one rushed to the newspapers to follow, not the progress of the war, but the case of Mr Pemberton Billing and the 47,000. Our belief in ourselves is so unconscious and irrational that it must always be incomprehensible to such a people as the Germans, who hate the casual and have a conscious sort of arrogance which is a very different thing; and no doubt it has its dangers. But it served its purpose once more in 1918. We went forward again, as a matter of course, when the tide turned, without any particular exaltation or parade, still less any surprise at our own powers, and with hardly a thought (so far as the great mass of us was concerned) of the genius which was directing all our movements, as well as those of three other national armies. But I think that toward the end of the preliminary stage, when Foch’s successive punches, carried just so far as was necessary and no farther, had exhausted and demoralised the enemy and driven him once more to the fallacious shelter of the Hindenburg Line, we began to understand that something more than luck and confidence lay behind this transformation. For the first time since the war began every man in the Army felt an interest and a pride in the combined strategy in which so obviously he was playing a part. The peculiarly English analogy of the skilled boxer was patent, and appealed to all. And from now to the end, in spite of losses and exhaustion, a new spirit of enthusiasm urged us on, and was manifest in many ways.

With its growth, not only in our ranks but in those of the French, Belgians, and Americans, coincided a notable decline in the German _moral_. The resistance to our advance became spasmodic and liable to sudden collapses. And before the end of September--far earlier than at one time any one can have hoped--the hour was ripe for the big kick. This was launched on a scale, and on broad principles of calculated opportunism, beside which the isolated German blows earlier in the year seemed mechanical and clumsy. On 26th September the American 1st and French 4th Armies opened the ball on a front of forty miles astride the Argonne: on the 27th came our assault on the Canal du Nord: on the 28th, Belgians, French, and British were sweeping over the lost desolation of Flanders, and the 5th and 10th French Armies were climbing once more the slopes beyond the Aisne; and on the 29th the remaining fraction of the battered German front, the Siegfried Line from Vendhuile to St Quentin, began to slide into ruin before General Rawlinson’s 4th Army. A compound operation of this magnitude, reaching its climax in four days, extending over 250 miles of country and involving twenty-four separate armies, or from four to five million men, with 30,000 guns, is almost beyond the capacity of the human brain to imagine as a whole. It is like contemplating infinity. Some one has called it, I believe, the Battle of Europe, and this seems indeed the only name by which it can be described.

Everywhere along this immense front tanks were helping to complete the overthrow they had done so much to bring about. The French used their light Rénaults in clouds before every attack. Our own Tank Corps, with no reserves, had lost in two months’ continuous offensive action three-fourths of its machines and a third of its personnel, but it played a conspicuous part, as I have tried to show, on 27th September and after. Sixty-six tanks were in action on the first day, and another 170 on the 29th. Everlasting reorganisation and reshuffling of units was one of the trials of this period, and indeed the manner in which battalions were shifted from one brigade to another before almost every attack caused more worry and labour than the attacks themselves. “The rapidity with which these changes were made would have bewildered both the Tank Corps Headquarters Staff and the brigade and battalion commanders themselves a few months back: now the knack of rapid movement had been mastered, and though great energy had to be exerted during such reorganisations, they were generally accomplished in time and efficiently.”[44] The necessity for some of them, it must be said, was not apparent. The 1st Brigade was very fortunate in this respect, as, except for the battle of Bapaume, it retained throughout at least its three original battalions; but some of the others suffered such constant permutations that their staffs must have been driven almost crazy. The 3rd Brigade, consisting on 8th August of the two Whippet battalions, the 3rd and 6th, was completely reconstituted on the 18th, when it was made up of the 9th, 11th, and 14th Heavy Battalions, while early in September its units were the 3rd, 6th, and 9th. The 4th Brigade, which started its career in December 1917, with the 1st, 4th, and 5th Battalions, found itself with the 4th, 5th, and 13th in May, the 5th and 10th in June, the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th early in August (the 9th being added a little later), dropped back to its original constituents before September, received the 301st Americans on the 19th of that month, the 16th Battalion on 5th October, and the 10th a day after, and fought its last battle with the 1st, 6th, 10th, 16th, and 301st. The 5th Brigade, which had no corporate existence until April, had the following battalions at one time or another on its strength: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 301st! These bewildering transfers were not always on paper only. They involved very often long additional treks for various units immediately before an action, and they were complicated by the wide dispersion which each individual battalion suffered in the course of an advance, disabled tanks, dumps, and rear headquarters being scattered for miles behind the line. When, for example, we moved from Bihucourt to Morchies in the middle of September, the battalion and companies’ rear headquarters, with a mass of stores, were still at Bienvillers, at least twelve miles away, while there were three or four tanks under repair at Bucquoy and a couple left at Bihucourt itself. This was quite a normal situation; and when it is remembered that every one of the seventeen battalions with the armies had left a similar trail behind, swallowing up men for guards and other duties, it will be realised that the co-ordination of these scattered fragments in the event of any reshuffling, and the ordinary routine of keeping in touch with them and feeding them, were complicated problems which entailed an immense amount of work for the staff and the transport. Nor was this all. There were in the field as well seven tank supply companies (two of which worked with infantry and artillery), each with twenty-four machines, a number of field (or salvage) companies, and an advanced stores attached to each brigade. All these various units, whether combatant or administrative, moved forward with the armies, and all drew their maintenance supplies in the last resort from the Central Workshops at Erin. It was a tremendous organisation that had sprung from the two companies which fought on the Somme in 1916; and not the least of its achievements was the adaptability and energy displayed in keeping the battalions supplied with their manifold requirements during the final rapid advance. The deplorable shortage of tanks themselves was the fault of no one in the Tank Corps. In the fighting units during these days perhaps the busiest men were the battalion and company engineers and equipment officers, who toiled like slaves to keep the dwindling residue of machines fit for service.

II.

I have carried the story of the 7th Battalion up to its last fight on 30th September. I will run very briefly through the remainder of its history, and through that of the Corps as a whole up to the Armistice.

On the day after Sancourt I returned from Pilgrim’s Rest to Pronville, where battalion headquarters had arrived from Bullecourt and where our tents were now erected. Our few remaining tanks (there were no more than six fit for action in the three companies) were still at Pilgrim’s Rest and Raillencourt. For over a week we were left in peace. On our front the Canadians were pushing slowly forward, in the teeth of a most determined resistance by fresh German divisions, toward the line of the Canal de L’Escaut north of Cambrai, being hampered by that town on their right and by the Sensée marshes on their left. But farther south the Germans were being pressed back upon the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line, and the big kick, with more room for its swing, was preparing to demolish these last defences. St Quentin had fallen, and everywhere south of Cambrai we were across the canal by 6th October, while the Canadians were approaching Ramillies and Eswars. On 8th October the storm burst. The Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line, Malincourt, Esnes, and Niergnies, with all the high ground south of Cambrai, were in our hands by the evening. Cambrai was entered that night, and the Germans were retreating to the Selle in great confusion, having lost 10,000 prisoners, 200 guns, and much _matériel_.[45]

The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Tank Brigades had a conspicuous share in this victory, although the six battalions engaged mustered between them only 82 tanks. Of these, 20 were furnished by the 12th Battalion, which had not been in action since 3rd September. It signalised its re-entry by becoming involved in the second tank _v._ tank battle of the war. It was working single-handed with the left and centre of the 3rd Army, its companies being attached to the 4th, 6th, and 17th Corps. B Company, on the right, with seven tanks, having helped our old friends the New Zealanders and the 37th Division about Lesdain and Esnes, rallied without further incident. One machine had been disabled by a shell which killed four of the crew. C and A Companies, attacking Seranvillers and Niergnies with the infantry of the 6th and 17th Corps, saw the latter established on the high ground east of the villages, and were returning to the rallying-point, when the Germans made a counter-attack led by seven captured Mark IV. tanks. The Germans had fitted their own 5.7 cm. guns, with very clumsy mountings, into the male machines, but retained the Lewis guns in the others. For the interesting episode which ensued, I will quote the 12th Battalion ‘History,’ beginning with A Company’s experiences:--

“Owing to the smoke and imperfect light, these (the German tanks) were at first taken to be some of our own, both by our infantry and tank crews, the latter supposing the strangers to belong to C Company. L 16, Captain Roe, was near the farm of Mont Neuve, east of Niergnies, when these tanks appeared in sight, and the foremost was within fifty yards before that officer realised that it was an enemy. One 6-pounder round was then fired at it, apparently disabling it, but almost simultaneously L 16 received two direct hits, one of which came through the cab, wounded Captain Roe, and killed his driver. Roe, believing his tank to be disabled, as the engine had stopped, got his crew out, went to L 9, which was near at hand, and led it back toward the German tanks. L 9 had already had five men wounded, had been on fire, and, having no gunners left, could not use its 6-pounders; but its commander, 2nd Lieut. Warsap, engaged the enemy with his Lewis gun until his tank received a direct hit, setting it on fire a second time. He was now forced to evacuate it, and as the counter-attack appeared to be successful, he blew the machine up to prevent it falling into the enemy’s hands. L 12, another 6-pounder tank, was hit twice and disabled before its commander had discovered that the strange tanks did not belong to C Company. There remained L 8, 2nd Lieut. A. R. Martell, but this tank had a leaking radiator and was almost out of water. Lieut. Martell therefore sent his crew back and went himself with an artillery officer to a captured German field-gun, which the two turned round and used against the enemy’s tanks, knocking one out. The tank which L 16 had engaged was crippled, either by the 6-pounder shell or by a captured anti-tank rifle, and the remaining two having been driven away by a female tank from C Company, the situation was restored.”

So much for A Company. C Company, in the meantime, had fared better. It started with seven tanks, of which one was hit and set on fire. “The others, having seen the infantry consolidated on the final objective across the Cambrai-Esnes road, were returning to the rallying-point when the German counter-attack began. On the extreme left, L 54, a female tank commanded by 2nd Lieut. T. B. Walters, encountered the enemy’s tanks which already had been engaged with A Company’s section. Lieut. Walters at once attacked two female tanks, fired several thousand rounds at them, silenced their guns, and drove them off the field. One was subsequently knocked out by shell-fire. While this brisk little battle was in progress, a couple of male tanks, L 45 (2nd Lieut. Clark) and L 49 (2nd Lieut. Sherratt), had the good fortune to meet, near a sunken road east of Seranvillers, two hostile female tanks firing on our infantry, who had been driven back from the second objective. The 6-pounders made short work of this pair, hitting them repeatedly and setting them on fire. As the survivors of their crews scrambled out, the Lewis guns were turned on them....”

These hostile tanks formed the backbone of the counter-attack, being very badly supported by their infantry. Nevertheless, only the presence of our own machines averted a serious local disaster, for the men of the 63rd Division had broken completely and were running back, until the tank battle gave them time to rally; while the Germans had reoccupied the high ground beyond Niergnies, and were pushing on into that village. After the repulse of their tanks they were easily driven off. A Company, owing to the natural misunderstanding when the German machines appeared out of the smoke, lost three tanks out of four; but after the action, General Blacklock, commanding the 63rd Division, expressed to all ranks his appreciation of their services, which had saved his infantry heavy losses. The intense gratitude of the infantry themselves (for what, but for the smoke, would have been a simple business, as we had several more male tanks than the Germans) was an earnest of the severe fright they had suffered, and should have brought home to their superiors in a trenchant fashion the moral value of the weapon which they were so fortunate as to have almost exclusively at their disposal. A few hundred German tanks, instead of a dozen or so, would have made our progress, even at this late hour, a much slower and more difficult matter. So far as the Tank Corps was concerned, the only lesson to be drawn from the encounter at Niergnies was one already learnt at Villers-Bretonneux--namely, the advisability, in view of further similar meetings, of fitting every tank with a 6-pounder gun. It was as a result of these two actions that a number of Mark V. and V. Star females were converted into composite or “hermaphrodite” machines, with a 6-pounder sponson on one side. The occasion for which they were designed, however, did not recur. Although the Germans used one or two tanks in subsequent counter-attacks, our machines did not meet them again.

III.

On October 10th, when the Canadian line was several miles beyond Cambrai, the 7th Battalion sent a composite detachment of four fighting tanks and a wireless machine, which I accompanied, to Escadœuvres, a suburb of the town to the north-east, on the road to Iwuy. This involved crossing the Canal de L’Escaut and two parallel streams by a series of narrow bridges (two of them temporary structures) between Morenchies and Ramillies. Escadœuvres was a working-class suburb, and its small houses, many of which were shattered, were littered with the poor belongings of its inhabitants, who had not been evacuated many days. The Germans, before they left, had flung everything about in a final hunt for loot, or in sheer destructiveness, and, thorough to the last in small details, had put a bullet through every mirror, clock, and piano which was not already broken. The tanks were here for two days and nights, the officers occupying a tiny house of one room and a cellar which had been used by the German _Ortskommandant_. As the enemy was still holding on to the Douai front, the 1st Army now had a left flank twelve or fifteen miles long, extending from Thun-Levêque on the canal to somewhere near Etaing, at a right angle to the rest of the line; and in Escadœuvres we were shelled persistently by a high-velocity gun which fired from a point well behind us across the Sensée. This was an annoyance, but a greater tragedy to me was the loss of my valise, which was cut off from the back of the Major’s car as he was bringing it at night through the packed traffic in Cambrai. My servant had of course filled it with things I did not want at Escadœuvres and could not replace--old cherished garments and other oddments such as one feels a positive affection for.

The detachment was withdrawn from Escadœuvres on the 12th, as the country in front, seamed with small rivers, was unsuitable for serious tank operations, and a few days later the battalion was placed in G.H.Q. Reserve and concentrated at Fontaine-Notre-Dame. This was preparatory to a return, when railway exigencies permitted, to the Bermicourt area, for a complete refit with Mark V.’s. Another party of officers and men had left to stiffen the new battalions in England, and I was expecting to follow in a few days. On 16th October, however, I learnt that I had been posted as Battalion Reconnaissance Officer to the 12th Battalion. The next day I said good-bye to the 7th, with which I had worked and fought for two years, and joined my new unit at Cattenières, south of the Cambrai-Le Cateau road.

On this front the enemy had fallen back everywhere to the Selle river. Douai at last had been abandoned, and the 5th Army was approaching Lille. We had now entered a new type of country, which to those accustomed to four years of fighting backwards and forwards over the devastated area seemed almost unnatural. During one’s visits to England on leave, the first sight from the train of the Kentish orchards and hop-fields always left a strange illusion, as of something lacking, which was caused in fact by the absence of shell-holes; and the country beyond Cambrai affected one at first in a similar manner. It was so unlike war as we had known it. Every inch of the land was under cultivation. Immense fields of cabbage and beet, unbroken by any hedgerows, rolled onward for miles; the villages and farms were of great size and often untouched, and, with the little towns, such as Caudry, Le Cateau, and Solesmes, completed a picture that proclaimed in every article a previous state of comfort and prosperity. Before the war this region must have been one of the most flourishing in France. And, except that for the moment it was deserted, it was flourishing still. The Germans had seen to that, and had taken the profits. It was indeed a novelty to enter house after house where roofs, windows, and furniture remained untouched, and where, only a day or two before, civilians had been living. A little later, and we had moved forward again to places where half-starved women, dressed tidily in black, who had lived without meat for upwards of four years and without hope for almost as long, still cowered in cellars while the fighting passed by overhead, and who, when they were rescued and moved out of the gas and shelling to safer quarters, could yet find time (as I saw myself) to lay flowers on those of our dead that were lying in their streets. This was in St Python, a little suburb of Solesmes; and Solesmes itself, by way of contrast, provided a stupefying sidelight upon the minds of the most extraordinary people that ever inhabited this earth, for it was gay with new tricolour flags, manufactured, imported, and sold to the inhabitants by the Germans themselves in readiness for their defeat....

In many respects these last weeks were the most interesting of all, but I will not attempt to describe them here. There is a limit to the irrelevant matter permissible in any book, and I have more than a suspicion that I have exceeded it already. So far as tank operations are concerned, there is very little more to be said. When I joined the 12th Battalion at Cattenières, it was still working with three corps of the 3rd Army, its companies being at Avesnes-les-Aubert, Quiévy, and Viesly, all to the north of the Le Cateau road; and preparations were in hand for the forcing of the Selle river on 20th October. By this time the battalion, in spite of a reinforcement of 4 old Mark IV.’s from Erin, had only 12 tanks fit for action; and as 78 officers and men had just left for England, it was no less short of personnel, particularly of experienced drivers. As it happened, there was little chance of tanks being used in this region. A succession of rivers, running northward into the Scheldt--the Selle, the Harpies, the St Georges, the Ecaillon, and the Rhonelle--lay parallel to our front, and (except the St Georges, a mere brook) could only be crossed by tanks when the engineers had built bridges to replace those which the enemy was certain to destroy. Farther up these streams, where the 11th and other tank battalions were co-operating with the right of the 3rd Army and the whole of the 4th, they ceased to be insuperable obstacles; and on 17th October, tanks of the 4th Brigade crossed the Selle with the help of cribs. In the big attack of the 20th, four machines of the 11th Battalion got over near Neuvilly by means of an ingenious bridge made of sleepers, which was sunk in the river by the engineers the night before. Being under water, this bridge was not discovered by the Germans during the day, although the Selle approximated to No Man’s Land. But for our part, being faced by these various waterways where they were broader and deeper, we had a cheerless prospect of endless trekking with very little probability of arriving anywhere in time for action. Only once, in fact, were our tanks engaged. The attack on the 20th was entirely successful, except at Beaurain, a small village on very high ground a couple of miles due east of Solesmes, where the Germans continued to hold out for two days after the rest of their line had been forced back to the Harpies. Our tanks having been got across the Selle at St Python and Briastre, B Company was detailed to assist the 5th Division in the capture of Beaurain on the 23rd. Owing to accidents, only two tanks were available, and neither of these was mechanically fit. One had a cracked sleeve, and could only travel at low speed. The little action which ensued possesses one or two points of interest.

From the Selle Valley at Briastre the ground rose steeply in a series of ridges, each slightly higher than the last, to Beaurain, which was on the summit. Our outpost line was just east of the farm and road-junction at Marou, 2000 yards in front of the village. Between the two places was a spur of ground called the Grand Champ Ridge, where the Germans had a great number of machine-guns in pits. The two tanks were to clear this ridge, which was the enemy’s main line of resistance, and then proceed to mop up in Beaurain if required. They reached the valley in front of Marou at 10 P.M. on the 22nd, zero being at 3.20 in the morning. At 1 o’clock the enemy put down a heavy barrage along our front line, and the assaulting infantry suffered several hundred casualties and were thrown into great confusion. Expecting an attack, they sent up S.O.S. signals, while the tanks prepared for action. Nothing came of this bombardment, however, and it died down after half an hour to the normal intermittent shelling; but the infantry was so shaken that only the presence of the tanks induced them to go forward at zero. The Germans fought with desperate courage on the Grand Champ Ridge, where the machine-gunners fired until they were run over, and where the engine of L 13 (the tank with the cracked sleeve) stopped and could not be restarted for forty-five minutes. Our infantry being some way behind, the enemy swarmed round the tank, one officer bringing a machine-gun into the road within a few yards of it. The other tank, L 23, was having an equally hard task on the ridge, finding it very difficult in the mist and twilight to locate the hostile machine-guns; and the two were fighting alone for a quarter of an hour before the infantry at length came up, having collected on the way some fifty prisoners who had surrendered to the tanks. The latter had broken the back of the enemy’s resistance on the ridge, and the advance now went forward rapidly. Beaurain was cleared with little trouble, neither of the tanks being required, which was just as well, as one was broken down and the second pulling very badly. The officer and one man in L 23 were wounded, and the crew of L 13 was badly gassed, so that the company commander, walking forward from the rallying-point to meet the machines, found it crawling homeward out of control, the tank commander and driver being unconscious. Considering that both tanks went into action labouring under mechanical defects, their performance would have been highly creditable in any circumstances; and it fell out that in addition they alone carried the operation through, as the infantry concerned fully recognised. The latter, disorganised and badly shaken by the barrage which caught them before zero, and by a second which fell among them in the first minutes of the advance, would have made no progress against the nests of machine-guns on the Grand Champ Ridge if the tanks had not been there to take the lead and draw the enemy’s attention to themselves.

B Company was now left without any tanks fit to move. A Company, with four machines, was at Haussy, on the Selle north of Solesmes, and remained there. C Company alone, with three tanks, continued for two or three days to follow the Guards Division in its advance. It had been pointed out that the decrepit condition of these tanks, added to the series of obstructions formed by the rivers, made their chances of affording practical help very remote; but the Guards insisted on their following up as far as possible, on account of the great moral effect the mere knowledge of their presence had on the men! On the 24th, therefore, C Company had reached Capelle, at the junction of the Ecaillon and St Georges, our line being then within a mile of Le Quesnoy. On the following day orders came through from Tank Corps Headquarters for the withdrawal of the battalion. All companies, having patched up their machines, began the long trek back to the entraining railhead at Marcoing on the Canal de L’Escaut, a tedious process, as some of the tanks had to be towed most of the way. On 1st November I went on ahead to take over our winter quarters, a hutted camp in the devastated area at Ecurie, near Arras. Here we remained for six months, in extreme discomfort; and then, made up to strength from disbanded units of the corps, and provided with 24 Mark V.’s, entrained for Cologne.

The last tank battles of the war were fought on the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th November, just before the Armistice, around the Forest of Mormal. An idea of the lamentable state to which the corps was reduced will be gathered from the number of tanks and units employed on the first day. The 6th, 9th, 10th, and 14th Battalions were engaged. At full strength they would have mustered between them 168 tanks, they could now raise only 37. An interesting feature of the day’s fighting was that three supply-tanks, armed with one Hotchkiss gun apiece and carrying bridging material for the 25th Division, came into action near Landrecies. Our infantry was held up on the west bank of the Sambre Canal, and the officer in charge of the supply-tenders decided to see what he could do to help them. One tank was knocked out. The other two, followed by the infantry as if they had been fighting tanks, forced the German machine-gunners to surrender. During the next day eight Whippets of the 6th Battalion helped the 3rd Guards Brigade in the difficult enclosed country north of the Forest; and with two further actions on the Maroilles-Avesnes road, the Tank Corps’ active share in the war came to an end.

“Ninety-six days of almost continuous battle had now taken place since the great tank attack at Amiens was launched by the 4th Army on the 8th August, since when many officers and men of the Tank Corps had been in action as many as 15 and 16 times. During this period no less than 1993 tanks and tank armoured-cars had been engaged on 39 days in all, 887 machines had been handed over to salvage, 313 of these being sent to the Central Workshops, and 204 having been repaired and reissued to battalions. Of the above 887 tanks, only 15 had been struck off the strength as unsalvable. Casualties against establishment had been heavy, 598 officers and 2826 other ranks being counted amongst killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners; but when it is considered that the total strength of the Tank Corps on the 7th August (9500 of all ranks in France) was considerably under that of an infantry division, and that in the old days of the artillery battles, such as the first battle of the Somme, an infantry division frequently sustained 4000 casualties in twelve hours’ fighting, the tank casualties were extraordinarily light. From this we may deduce our final and outstanding lesson from all these battles--namely, that iron mechanically moved is an economiser of blood, that the tank is an economiser of life....”[46]

IV.

In the first days of November, when the Tank Corps was endeavouring to withdraw all its crippled battalions for a reorganisation and refit, pressure was put upon it to maintain some units in the field. The Army, in fact, discovered that it could not go on without tanks, in spite of the demoralisation which plainly was spreading among the enemy. The cavalry, provided at last with all the conditions most favourable to their use, were as helpless as ever, and the infantry still needed the moral support which the presence of tanks afforded, even if the latter were hardly ever used. It was decided, therefore, that each tank brigade should send forward one composite battalion. Orders to this effect had just reached us at Ecurie (the whole of the 1st Brigade being now concentrated in this area), when the Armistice was signed.

For some time after 11th November, however, the Tank Corps, in common with every other branch of the service, was still busy preparing for further eventualities. The composite battalions were no longer immediately required, and only the armoured-cars went forward into Germany; but at Bermicourt and Erin there was no relaxation of effort until the occupation of the Rhine bridge-heads, and the enemy’s surrender of his fleet and artillery rendered any serious resumption of hostilities impossible. At the same time, the criminal outcry for instant demobilisation which disgraced still further (if that was possible) our unscrupulous press, hit the corps in France especially hard. No sooner had the battalions been brought again to something like full strength by drafts of conscripted miners, strikers, and professional footballers, who might in time have been knocked into shape, than all these arrivals, who had been only a few months in the Army, were released again--a business which caused very natural discontent among the original rank and file who had done all the fighting and who were still retained.

In the meantime, during the last month of the war, further developments in the composition of the corps had been authorised and carried into effect. The 6th Tank Brigade was formed in October, consisting nominally of the 16th, 18th, and 301st (American) Battalions. The 18th Battalion had just come out from England. This brigade was never in action as a whole. There were now forming at Bovington the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th Battalions, but none of these would be available before the early spring of 1919. By that date, however, eight tank brigades, with a total strength (if up to establishment) of upwards of 15,000 officers and men and 1000 tanks, should be ready for immediate action. At least two new types of tank, known as the Medium C and Mark IX., were under construction; but the former was not very satisfactory, although fast, and the latter was an infantry-carrying machine; and most of the battalions would be armed with the Mark V. or an improved Whippet. It was hoped, however, provided personnel was available and labour conditions satisfactory, to so expand the battalions as to put a great many more than 1000 machines into the field at once. The dream of the Tank Corps, and one which probably would have materialised if the war had continued, was a vast smashing attack by 4000 or 5000 tanks. With this prospect in view, the organisation of the corps, which threatened to become unwieldy, was also to be expanded, and two days before the Armistice three new formations came into existence, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Groups, each consisting of two brigades under a Major-General. Whether this multiplication of large staffs was the best solution of the problem is a matter of opinion. It smacks rather too much of the usual Army method of making any excuse serve for inventing new sinecures, and there was no ambiguity about the manner in which it was rushed through just before the Armistice, so that every staff officer in the Tank Corps got a step in rank (and sometimes two) while yet these pleasant fruits of office were going begging. Bermicourt now began to look like a poppy-field for red hats. At the same time, a more indefensible scheme of centralisation was applied to the technical side, by the formation of what were called Group Inspectorates. This high-sounding title merely concealed the fact that battalions were deprived of their engineer staffs, which were lumped together in itinerant and irresponsible posses, whose business was to supervise all mechanical work in the field. In other words, a fresh set of semi-independent staffs was created.

In the matter of the groups, it is possible of course that it was not intended to increase the number of brigades, but merely to add battalions to them. I have no information about this, but it does not appear very probable. In any case, as the tank fighting unit is still the company, tank battalions being the administrative equivalents of infantry brigades, it would seem that the object aimed at would have been better attained by increasing the strength of battalions and abolishing altogether the intermediate tank brigades. The French system of forming their tank units into regiments of three battalions, on the Continental infantry basis, is yet more practical. All these plans may appear to be but variations of the same theory; but in fact there is a great gulf fixed between the regimental outlook and that of a higher formation, and one of the curses of the British Army is the way in which staffs tend to spring up like mushrooms on the slightest provocation.

This discussion, however, is now become academic. Groups and brigades alike have vanished for the present into the limbo of lost hopes, and what is left of the Tank Corps hangs in a state of suspended animation, conscious of a great past and a very uncertain future. After innumerable tentative schemes for a post-bellum establishment as part of the regular Army, the corps was fixed definitely a few months ago at one brigade of five regular battalions. General Elles remained as Brigadier, and five lieutenant-colonels were selected by seniority from the original group and brigade commanders. Although five battalions was an inadequate force, it appeared as if the war had taught us something, if not overmuch. Remembering what had happened during hostilities, one really had expected to find officers from the Camel Corps or the Life Guards appointed to command tank units in a peace establishment. But when it came to the junior commissioned ranks, the old Adam reappeared with a vengeance. A large number of subalterns temporarily commissioned into the old Tank Corps wished to stay on in the new one, as professional soldiers; and as many of them had one or two years’ experience of tank warfare, the retention of the most suitable would seem to be, to a reasonable being, a matter of course, setting aside all arguments of decency or propriety. But this would have been carrying common-sense too far. The War Office, as usual, had a trump up its sleeve. It had granted regular commissions in the infantry and other arms (but never in the Tank Corps itself) on such a prodigal scale during the war that the reduction of the Army left something like 7000 of these officers surplus to establishment. Billets must be found for them, and it occurred to some one that the new Tank Corps would accommodate several hundred. The old tank officers, therefore, having at first been encouraged to apply for regular commissions, were now told that they were not wanted. Sandhurst and the surplus must be considered before suitability.

This was the state of affairs at the end of 1919. What has happened since, or what the end of it will be, I do not know at the time of writing. There was a rumour, just when I was leaving the Army, that everything was to be changed once more, that all tank battalions were to be abolished, and that only a small training and experimental depot was to be maintained at Bovington or Wareham. Every infantry officer, on the other hand, was to pass through a tank course ...! Whatever the basis of truth in this circumstantial report (and it has received confirmation in recent newspaper paragraphs), so pernicious a scheme is beyond comment. In the meantime, the new regular brigade has come into being, and so far continues to exist; and since the authorities have discovered the value of tanks during industrial disturbances and in Ireland, they may harden their hearts against the Treasury, and the Tank Corps may tide over this bad hour with the help of Trade Unions and Sinn Fein! It will be the first time that either institution has served a useful purpose.

In the long-run, of course, we shall have to equip ourselves with a large Tank Corps again. Everything depends upon whether we do so before the next war or in the middle of it. Other nations will have tanks, and in large numbers. The French are providing for a corps of 30,000 men, and the Americans (who designed a tank of their own during the war) have also, I believe, taken up the question in earnest. Just as the origins of modern warfare at sea, and of all the scientific methods by which it is carried on, are to be found in the _Gloire_ and the little _Monitor_ of the early ’sixties, so it is no less certain that future warfare on land will be dominated by the successors of the Mark I. tank which struggled through the mud of the Somme battlefields. For once this country has taken the lead in military invention; and it has now at its disposal a preponderant body of experience in this new method. It remains to be seen whether the advantage will be maintained, or whether it will be lost by the diversion to political schemes of even the comparatively small annual outlay of money which is essential for adequate experiment.[47]

What form tank development will take is a subject beyond the scope of this book, and one on which I am not competent to speak. We are still on the threshold of the new enterprise, and there seem to be no limits at present to what may be achieved. We have already a tank which will float, and speeds of twenty and twenty-five miles an hour have been attained long ago with experimental machines. Colonel Fuller, who was G.S.O. 1 Tank Corps in France, points out in his new book[48] that, in future wars, land will become “a solid sea, as easily traversable in all directions as ice is by a skater; the battles in these wars will therefore more and more approximate to naval actions.” And he goes on to remark that “from the present-day tank to one which can plunge in the Channel at Calais at four in the morning, land at Dover at six o’clock, and be outside Buckingham Palace for an early lunch, will not probably require as many as the fifty-two years which have separated the _Merrimac_ from the _Tiger_ or the _Queen Elizabeth_.”

V.

When one has written a book of this kind, frankly partisan in character, it is peculiarly gratifying to find one’s arguments supported to the letter by independent testimony from another and far more authoritative quarter. I have kept this evidence to the last, in the manner (I believe) of the practised advocate; but, to be honest, the arrangement is due more to luck than judgment. It was only when this book was almost finished that I read General Sir Frederick Maurice’s short volume called ‘The Last Four Months: the End of the War in the West.’ It is so complete a confirmation of the case I have attempted to put forward that I cannot make a better end than by quoting some of its conclusions.

General Maurice, after discussing the various tactical expedients adopted by either side in their offensives, and the ultimate failure of all these methods to achieve the desired “break-through,” describes briefly the invention and early employment of tanks and the opinion held of them by the enemy. “It does not appear,” he says, “that Ludendorff was particularly impressed with the value of tanks before the events of 1918 taught him wisdom in this respect.” We then come to a consideration of the means the Allies had at their disposal for their counter-offensive in the summer of that year. Speaking of Sir Douglas Haig’s plans and resources, General Maurice points out that “in particular the great improvements which had been made in the tanks since their first appearance in battle and the quantities of them available, gave him just the means he needed for carrying through his scheme. Cambrai had proved that tanks could replace the long bombardment and obviate all the slow preparation which it involved.”

The action at Hamel is then described: “With this fortunate experiment faith in the tanks spread. The commanders already believed in them, and now that belief in their power to ‘make good’ spread to the ranks.” (Some of the commanders, it must be added, dissembled their belief very successfully until after Hamel!) General Maurice continues: “Tanks made surprise, that greatest weapon of generalship, much easier than it had been: they saved life and economised troops, and, therefore, that quick succession of punches for which Foch was seeking his opportunity became possible. The artist had his materials to hand. Honour to him that he knew how to use them.”

Of the great tank attack on 8th August, we read that “the tanks did invaluable service in cutting the German telegraph and telephone communications.... The work begun at Hamel was completed, and the moral ascendancy established by tanks, artillery, and infantry, working in combination, affected both private and General in the German Army.”

Later in the book General Maurice sums up the influences which together broke down the German _moral_, and again he insists upon the predominant part played by the tanks.

“The tanks had proved their efficacy in the preparations for Armageddon, now they were to take their part in the culmination toward which Foch had been working, and few things helped us more in the decisive struggle than the moral ascendancy which the success of the tanks in the preliminary battles had given us over the Germans. Captured German orders and other documents bear testimony to the dread with which the enemy regarded tanks at this time....” Here follows an extract from one such order, already quoted in an earlier chapter of this book. General Maurice continues: “This is the type of order which is the refuge of authority when caught napping. The German leaders had delayed too long to study the possibilities of tanks and the most effective means of meeting them. The ‘counter-measures’ presented in this order might have availed against tanks alone. They were useless against tanks, artillery, and infantry working in combination. They were, in fact, worse than useless, they were harmful, for they served to demonstrate to the German soldier, who was already in mortal fear of tanks and prepared to make their appearance an excuse for surrender, that his chiefs were as frightened of them as he was, and that they had no effective reply ready.”

And finally, the author makes this definite assertion: “It is certain that neither Foch’s skilful preparation for the great battle, nor the valour of the infantry, would have brought us victory if we had had to rely upon bombardment alone in order to batter down the German defences.”

These extracts read like a literal, if more sober, repetition of the theses at which I have been hammering, in and out of season, throughout this history; and they are uttered with an authority to which I have no pretence. It would have been difficult to find confirmatory evidence more apt and decisive than chance threw in my way, a fortnight before these lines were written, when I picked up General Maurice’s little volume. I would commend it to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among other people. The tank, in one sense, needs no advertisement now, any more than the first successful steam-engine or aeroplane needed one: ever since Cambrai, at the latest, all who had adequate acquaintance with the facts realised that it had come, not only to stay, but to predominate. It is one thing, however, to be convinced, and quite another to admit it, even to oneself. In a professional army, which (like any other close corporation) is a body made up of cliques, conservatism, and personal jealousy, held together by interest, no gratitude is felt for innovations once the immediate occasion for their usefulness is past. General officers who called for tanks at all hours in the field, because they could not rely upon their infantry going forward unless tanks were there to lead them, lost all interest in these auxiliaries the moment the Armistice was signed. And further, recognition which cannot be denied to some instrument is often withheld from the hand which directs it. It is for these reasons that unbiassed acknowledgment of the services rendered by the Tank Corps is peculiarly valuable at this time. People talk about tanks, and read more or less worthless books in which these machines figure occasionally as comic and semi-animate monsters moving capriciously here and there without method or principle; but while it is dimly recognised that they influenced powerfully the course of the war, it is hardly suspected that they are governed, like any other military arm, by tactical considerations, that they are not irresponsible units but parts of an organised whole, and that every action they have fought has been planned as carefully as any infantry assault or artillery barrage. Still less attention is paid to the men who fought in them, and whose skill and gallantry, displayed often amid circumstances of horror peculiar even in this conflict, forged in three years, from insignificant and disheartening beginnings, so vast and efficient a weapon as the Tank Corps eventually became. It is these aspects of the case, among others, that I have tried especially to set out in this book.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The first reply to this memorandum from the Engineer-in-Chief was characteristic. After a few preliminary objections, General Fowke concluded as follows: “I therefore think that before considering this proposal we should descend from the realms of imagination to solid facts.”

[2] ‘The Tank Corps.’ C. A. Williams-Ellis.

[3] Although the Navy has specialised in the science of mechanical warfare, and although the very idea of the “landship” involves the application on land of some of the principles of war at sea, the Army, as soon as it assumed control of the tanks, refused to profit by the expert knowledge at its disposal. Had it been possible, no doubt every trace of the tanks’ original parentage would have been sedulously erased. As it was, the sponson and the 6-pounder gun, for which no feasible military equivalents could be proposed, necessarily were retained; but on such technical questions as ventilation, the use of telegraphs, and the various mechanical contrivances in respect of which the tank, in its small way, resembles the engine-room of a ship, all the suggestions put forward by experienced nautical engineers were contemptuously rejected.

[4] Steel plates, with pinhole perforations, replaced the prisms in the Mark IV.

[5] For protection against these splinters, and against the “splash” from ordinary bullets hitting crevices round the gun shields, crews were provided with small vizors of steel and chain mail.

[6] The tactical recommendations set out in this document were disregarded completely by the general staff until the compulsion of events enforced their adoption. Colonel Swinton insisted on the necessity of tanks leading the attack in masses, and pointed out that, to ensure the rapid exploitation of any opening they should make, a very large force of infantry must be launched at once behind them. “Not only,” he says, “does it seem that the tanks will confer the power to force successive complete and unbattered defence lines, but, as has been explained, the more speedy and uninterrupted their advance, the greater the chance of their surviving sufficiently long to do this. _It is possible, therefore, that an effort to break right through the enemy’s defensive zone in one day may now be contemplated as a feasible proposition._” Cambrai, notwithstanding the half-hearted support afforded, proved absolutely the justice of these contentions; and in 1918 they were accepted as a matter of course--without, however, any acknowledgment of their origin. Colonel Swinton also pointed out that field artillery was the tank’s chief danger, and one which could be countered only by the help of other arms. Numerous minor recommendations, such as the use of case-shot, smoke, and wireless, the necessity of intelligent co-operation by infantry and artillery, and questions of administration, supply, and transport in the field, were either turned down at once by the general staff or were disregarded; yet every one of them subsequently had to be adopted.

[7] Now, I believe, Sir Philip Gibbs and Sir Beach Thomas.

[8] The spirit of prophecy must have inspired this remark, as it was written some months before the creation of Air Marshals and other heavenly bodies.

[9] ‘A Company of Tanks,’ by Major W. H. L. Watson, D.C.M., chapter iv., ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ for June 1919.

[10] ‘A Company of Tanks,’ by Major Watson.