Chapter VIII: Ypres: the 31st July

I.

All spare officers and crews had taken part in the reconnaissance of the Salient, for they might be called upon at any moment. And, as it happened, one of the original tank commanders in my section fell ill about the middle of July, whereupon I stepped into the vacancy.

His tank was also _hors de combat_ with a broken-down engine. It being impossible to repair it in the time available a new machine, with two or three others required by the brigade, was on its way from Erin to replace it, and this I was to take over on its arrival. The night it detrained, therefore, I accompanied Kessel, my section commander, to the Oosthoek ramp. The event was marked by one startling occurrence. Earlier in the evening the Germans had been industriously shelling the far end of the wood with shrapnel; but everything was quiet when the tank train pulled in soon after ten o’clock. It was a very dark night. Before eleven, however, my new tank was parked up and camouflaged in the wood to the north of the military road. The rest of the company’s tanks were a quarter of a mile away, on the south side. Lorries had come up to take the men back to Lovie Château, and we were standing by them, waiting for a few laggards, when a very large ammunition dump near Hospital Farm, half a mile to the northward, was hit and exploded. It was, I suppose, one of the biggest dumps in the Salient--a towering accumulation of every size and type of shell, together with thousands of cases of S.A.A., rockets, grenades, Very lights, and other inflammatory stuff--and even from where we stood the effect of its destruction was prodigious and alarming. A great red glare blazed up suddenly above the trees, broadened, and grew higher; volumes of blood-shot smoke, streaked with rockets, covered half the sky; and presently, through the pop-pop-pop of exploding rifle ammunition and the louder detonations of shells, we could hear the crackle of burning timber as the neighbouring trees themselves caught fire. In this lay a serious menace to the tanks, for the wood, although straggling, was continuous. It was not long before we could see the distant flames through the trees in front of us. In the meantime, preceded by magnificent eruptions of fire and sparks, there had burst two terrific explosions, whose concussions shook the ground, hit us like blows, and flung fragments of white-hot metal on to the military road. Happily, what little wind there was blew away from us, and the fire made no appreciable gain in our direction; and after standing by until midnight, prepared to drive the tanks out of the wood if necessary, we decided that we might go home. It was surprising that the Germans (so far at least as one could judge amid the prevailing uproar) refrained from stimulating things in general by a little judicious shelling. The glare of the great conflagration, which lit up the whole Salient, must have been visible from Courtrai. It was still blazing and exploding as we left; and two hours later, at Lovie Château, four miles away, I heard another series of crashing detonations.

The following morning I marched my crew down to the new tank. I decided naturally to take with me my own men, with whom by now I was well acquainted, in preference to the strange drivers and gunners whose officer I had replaced. The latter, I think, were as disappointed as my own crew was pleased by this translation; for throughout the battalion the spirit in the ranks was admirable. Most of the N.C.O.’s and a large proportion of the men came from the original F Company of the Heavy Branch, and very few of them (in my crew, for example, none at all) had ever seen a shell burst until they came to the Salient; and while it is true that soldiers often look forward to their first battle with a confidence born simply of ignorance, and deteriorate in _moral_ as their experience of horrors increases, the personnel of the Tank Corps maintained to the end a conspicuously high standard. And to go into action in a tank, as I hope to show, is not the bed of roses some rash people used to think it. I put this consistent excellence down in part to the class of man which the corps attracted.

There was plenty of work to be done when I took over G 46, whose more intimate name--transferred from her disabled predecessor, and none of my choosing--was “Gina.” (The tanks and each battalion were christened with names beginning with the initial letter of their unit. Thus we were all “G’s.” “Gina,” appropriately enough, was a female; but in fact it seems natural to speak of all tanks as feminine, as if they were ships.) I have said already that no movement was permitted in Oosthoek Wood, and that in consequence it was impossible to test the transmission of my new command. Engines could be run quietly, however; and my first driver, a boy named Johnstone from the Armstrong College at Newcastle, who was one of those fortunate beings with a _flair_ for anything mechanical, tinkered away affectionately at the magneto and other parts until the engine of G 46 ran like a dream. Throughout her short military career it gave no trouble of any kind until the water on the Pilkem Ridge got into the clutch and put the whole thing out of action at once and for ever.

Most of the novelties in the Mark IV. have been described already; but I have omitted so far any account of the new unditching gear tested by us for the first time at Wailly, and now to be used with a vengeance in the Salient. In place of the two short torpedo spars, each tank was now fitted with a single squared boom, about twelve feet long and strengthened with steel. It was a most heart-breaking affair to man-handle, for it weighed nine hundredweight; but for its particular work it was highly efficient. A pair of longitudinal rails lifted it clear of all obstructions on the roof, and when not in use it lay at right angles across these just above the spud-box fitted on the stern of the tank, its ends projecting a couple of feet on each side of the latter. Originally, the boom was lashed in place; but afterwards clips were provided to secure it to the rails. When required for unditching, it was attached to the track-plates on either side in the same manner as the old spars, by a pair of chains and clamps. This attachment could be effected by a couple of men standing behind the tank, usually the most sheltered spot. On its completion the heavy boom was carried forward along the rails as the tracks revolved, slid down on to them in front of the cab, and was then pulled under the tank, where its great length and stiff resistance transversely to the direction of the latter’s movement enabled the machine to climb out of almost any position. This boom was tested first in the sodden area of Messines, after that battle; and it was in use with all heavy tanks to the end of the war. Its only disadvantage--an inevitable one--was its weight. Added to that of thirty or forty iron spuds or shoes, it completed an extra load of a couple of tons; and on occasions when the heavier Mark IV. males became badly ditched it was found that the engine was not powerful enough to overcome this handicap. I have seen a boom on a tank lying at a rather acute angle refuse to move at all. But for all normal cases of ditching it was invaluable.

In those days tank equipment was devised and issued on a lavish scale. One took over with the machine a vast assortment of instruments calculated to soften the asperities of a very cramped and uncomfortable mode of warfare, and calling to mind the fittings of H.M.S. _Mantelpiece_. If we had no zoetropes, excellent carriage clocks, mounted in heavy brass, were the perquisites in more senses than one of every tank commander. The number of these clocks destroyed by shell-fire was so abnormal in the Salient that after that deplorable campaign the issue was stopped, it being felt that the residue of timepieces in stock would serve a more useful purpose and lead a safer life in the numerous offices of Central Stores and Workshops at Erin. A haversack full of splints, shell-dressings, iodine, and other sinister medical comforts, quite passable binoculars, electric hand-lamps, signalling shutters, six periscopes, and an ingenious device like a pair of pantomime braces fitted with batteries, switches, and red and green lights, to be used in guiding tanks at night, were also among the treasures thrust upon us in a very open-handed manner. But this halcyon age did not endure for long. Vulgar considerations of waste and expenditure supervened. Before the end the whereabouts of every spanner and split-pin became a cause of acute worry to us all. It should be unnecessary to add that this era of suspicion brought with it a veritable spate of new Army Forms--T.K. 5’s and T.Q. 17’s and so on--continually superseding each other and never by any chance filled in correctly. We were already in possession of immense log-books, atrocities known as battle history sheets, and pigeon-message forms. A fully-equipped tank, in short, was a combination of a battleship, an ironmonger’s shop, an optician’s, a chemist’s, a grocer’s, and a Government office. We only wanted a typewriter to round off the outfit.

I do not remember the exact date on which I took over G 46 and her belongings; but it must have been between the 15th and 20th of July. The battle, fixed originally for the 25th, had already been put back three days. The final postponement, to the 31st, was made known only at the last moment. In these circumstances there was not too much time for all that had to be done. The whole tank required to be washed down and scrubbed, for she came straight from the workshops in a filthy condition. The six Lewis guns had to be cleaned, and the 276 drums filled with ammunition. Track-plates, spuds, camouflage nets, petrol, oil, and grease had to be procured from the advanced stores and dump beside the ramp. At the same time further reconnaissance was carried out, and we all went to see the large-scale model of our sector of the attack which the 18th Corps had built out of sand and brick-rubble in the centre of the wood. I cannot honestly say that this ingenious curiosity was of much help to us. Here, however, some sort of liaison was effected with the infantry with whom we were to work. Meanwhile, back in camp at Lovie Château there were conferences with Reconnaissance officers and discussions with company commanders after dinner. Aeroplane photographs were studied, and special tank charts composed. (Every tank commander, so far as was possible, made his own chart on a scale of ¹⁄₅₀₀₀.) Then there was the question of supply to be considered. All crews took into action two days’ ordinary rations in addition to the emergency ration; but this food was supplemented by a few delicacies considered suitable to the festive occasion. Thus most of us carried also oranges, lemons, chocolates, and biscuits, one water-bottle filled with rum, and a bottle of whisky. Personally, I took two bottles of whisky, and was extremely thankful that I did.

Turning to the operations themselves, the 18th Corps was attacking on a front of two divisions: the 51st Division on the left and the 39th on the right. The two companies of G Battalion were allotted as follows: 19 Company, with my own section--No. 10--of 21 Company (16 tanks in all) was to advance in two waves with the 39th Division. The two remaining sections of 21 Company (8 tanks) worked in a single wave with the 51st Division. The task of these troops was to carry the German first and second systems on the Pilkem Ridge and then secure the crossings of the Steenbeek. The positions of these crossings, at or near St Julien on the 39th Divisional front, determined the distribution of the tanks, it being the business of the second wave on the right to endeavour to get over the stream and help the infantry of the 118th Brigade to consolidate on the far side. My section, in the first wave, received the following orders:--

“After crossing the German front line, No. 10 Section will
split up. The left-hand pair, G 45 and G 46, pass to the north
of Kultur Farm and take the northern end of Kitchener’s Wood,
giving special attention to Boche Castle and strong-point;
then proceed round the wood and mop up in conjunction with
the infantry until the barrage at line S lifts at zero plus
4.1, when they will advance with the infantry, giving special
attention to Regina Cross. The right-hand pair, G 47 and G 48,
passing to the south of Kultur Farm, will take the southern
end of Kitchener’s Wood, and on the lifting of the barrage on
line S at zero plus 4.1, will devote their attention to the
strong-point at Alberta, and push forward at the discretion of
the commander towards Hugel Hollow.

“As soon as the infantry are consolidated on the Steenbeek
Line, tanks will rally at C 11 d 20.90 (north of Alberta).”

I despair of making any one unfamiliar with the Salient understand what lay behind these clear and apparently simple instructions. Some of the difficulties before us will be described in the context. I will remark here, however, that every tank had to cross the enemy’s front line by a single narrow gap between two flooded areas which marked the sites of Hampshire and Canadian Farms--themselves utterly demolished. We were warned that this front system was likely to become a serious obstacle. Lying in a hollow, always wet, it was to be subjected to a terrific barrage, which would destroy it completely, break down the revetments and all such firm surfaces as parapets and parados provided, and, in short, reduce the whole line to a grisly conglomeration of mounds of mud and pools of water. And once across, things would become even worse. For sixteen days before the attack the whole Pilkem Ridge was blasted by heavy-calibre shells. The amount of artillery we had concentrated in the Salient was unprecedented. Three thousand guns, I believe, were in position on that restricted front. Round about Brielen, Vlamertinghe, and the château called Les Trois Tours, batteries of 6-inch, 8-inch, 9.2-inch howitzers, and 60-pounder guns lined every hedge: down both sides of one narrow track that I remember one passed them every few yards; and when the preliminary bombardment was at its height it was sheer torture to be in the neighbourhood. As a result, everywhere behind the German line the water was welling up and spreading until the whole surface was a mere crust that would dissolve at a touch. The final barrage at zero, which as usual was to fall at dawn, would finish the work. The enemy’s second line, along the crest, was to be deluged with 9.2’s; while 15-inch railway guns had been shelling for some days the strong-point at Boche Castle, for which my own tank was to make. Imagine a country like the Lincolnshire flats, or the valley of the Kentish Stour, or any other piece of reclaimed and water-logged land in England, subjected, at the end of three years’ systematic annihilation by high explosives, to this three weeks’ wild crescendo of destruction, and some idea may be gathered of what the area behind the hostile front had become even before the downpour on the 31st, and after added the ultimate touches of disintegration and horror and misery.

The probable conditions awaiting us were known to all; but none of our conjectures equalled the reality. Before the battle we were more concerned over what proved in the event a comparatively minor evil--the difficulty we should experience in finding our way to our various objectives. The view from inside a tank, as one cannot repeat too often, is restricted and misleading. Once we had crossed our front line, the few miserable tree-clumps which we had studied from a distance might appear very different near at hand. They might have been destroyed, or we might fail to see them at all. The one unmistakable landmark, Kitchener’s Wood--a plantation, still in fair condition, some 700 yards in length--was actually out of sight until we had climbed out of some dead ground at the foot of the ridge; and with the dust and smoke of the battle the first hour after dawn was certain to be dark and confusing. As our compasses were thoroughly unreliable, there was a danger of losing direction at the very start. A few tanks, indeed, quite excusably did so. And throughout the day, all over a battlefield whose utter bewildering sameness no words can express, there was much groping and guessing and general uncertainty. One of G Battalion’s tanks wandered right across two corps’ fronts. But on the whole our lengthy and sedulous coaching was very triumphantly vindicated: routes were maintained and objectives reached with surprising accuracy and punctuality. Delays in most cases were due to the appalling state of the ground, some tanks having to be unditched two or three times before they got into action at all.

II.

If the belief still lingers that the British soldier, keen and willing as he is, always goes into battle (as the Ollivier Cabinet once went to war) with a light heart, it must be due to too much reading, in trashy books and journals, of the productions of half-educated persons with a bias against truth. For very few men, of whatever race, can even approach the front line in these scientific days with any real equanimity of spirit. The processes by which one can be hurt are too many and various, and impend too nearly to permit of it. No healthy being likes the idea of being killed or mutilated. A common sense of subordination and comradeship, the fear of being thought afraid, and the power of habit, take one further than all the high-flown cant about glory and the joy of battle. And indeed if we all went into battle with a light heart there would be no merit in the thing: such tokens as medals and ribbons would lose what small significance they still possess; and we should be more (or less) than human.

It is during the days immediately before a long-expected action that men show in their several ways that they are, on the contrary, very human indeed. The strain which perhaps for weeks has been there is suddenly increased. Nerves begin to wear, tempers to rise, uncomfortable moods to supervene. Only the very young and inexperienced sometimes are superior to this failing. I know that most of us in the camp by Lovie Château grew rather irritable and contentious toward the end of our period of waiting. The depressing influence which seemed always to brood over the Salient, and the feeling that we were embarking upon a novel and gigantic gamble, were enough to account for it. The weather had been uncertain, and about the 24th rain fell heavily. The camp, pitched in a wood amid choking undergrowth, became steamily moist, smelly, and unhealthy. Every two or three hours during every night the enemy’s aeroplanes came over and bombed the neighbourhood thoroughly. There was the usual futile racket and excitement, with searchlights wavering, shrapnel sparkling and descending on our heads, and tracer bullets soaring up in streams in every direction but the right one. This became so much a habit that we grew accustomed to it; and we used to lie in bed amid the uproar and wonder sleepily if it were better to put our steel helmets over our faces or our stomachs. The tank park in Oosthoek Wood suffered from the same persecution, to which there seemed to be no adequate reply. So far as I remember, we were lucky enough to escape casualties from this cause; but other people were not so fortunate. I recall one ghastly incident of this period, because my crew was on guard fifty yards away when it happened, and might well have been involved in the disaster. A battalion of Northumberland Fusiliers, coming out of the line one evening, bivouacked beside the military road close to our tanks. They had réveillé at three o’clock in the morning, preparatory to marching off to rest billets, and at that dangerous hour very foolishly lit candles and waved lanterns about in the wood. The usual German aeroplane was at hand. It dropped two heavy bombs very neatly into the bivouac, and in an instant killed or wounded over a hundred men.

The effect of these powerful bombs, provided with light fuses which detonated at a touch, was terrible; and it would be thought that any one who once had seen the victims of a raid would be circumspect for ever after. Yet troops, even after considerable experience, were often extraordinarily stupid in this matter of hostile aircraft. Another north-country battalion--Tynesiders, I believe--was in camp near Elverdinghe about this time. Two or three German aeroplanes flew low over the camp in broad daylight. Instead of keeping out of sight, the whole battalion rushed out to see the raiders. The latter might have overlooked the camouflaged tents and huts, but the sudden appearance of a mass of white upturned faces caught their attention at once, with the inevitable result. A few bombs were released, and the crowd of spectators became a shambles. The Tynesiders lost 140 men in as many seconds.

Toward the end of July the shelling of Oosthoek and other likely places also increased in volume. The enemy was perfectly aware of the imminence of the attack, and also, as it appeared, of the original date and the first postponement; and the back areas suffered in consequence. The red dust floated over Ypres all day. Poperinghe received increased attention, and was bombed heavily into the bargain. The canal became more than ordinarily unpleasant. But the German artillerists, in addition to persecuting these obvious targets, had a system of plastering with shells certain empty areas which appeared to offer no attractions to a gunner. This wasteful method gathered in no doubt a few stray victims, but at a disproportionate cost in ammunition. The forward region, about Frascati and La Brique, was perhaps more naturally a favourite one for this blind “area” shooting, for field batteries were hidden among the willows; and the enemy’s increasing suspicion of this neighbourhood caused us a good deal of annoyance during our final journeys on reconnaissance. I remember how Kessel, Merchant, and I, having been up the line one morning, were sitting under a hedge near Frascati, eating bully sandwiches and discussing (of all things) the fourth dimension, when we found ourselves the unworthy centre of one of these displays of hate. To us it seemed purposeless and uncalled for to a degree. There was no working party in the neighbourhood; no one, indeed, was in sight anywhere, and the batteries, some distance away, were not firing. But high-velocity shells arrived in streams, and when we were back, very thankfully, at the canal, the dust-clouds were still rising busily in the desert waste between us and the farm.

During these last days our preparations in Oosthoek Wood were completed. The fighting tanks were ready for action. The supply-tanks--two per company--were filled up with petrol, oil, and ammunition; limbered waggons drawn by mules were attached to us to work between Frascati and the base, and we had also one wireless and one cable-laying tank. Oranges, chocolates, and whisky had been collected. We had received barrage maps and time-tables, and had visited the headquarters of the various infantry units with whom we were to work. Merchant and myself, with G 45 and G 46, were co-operating with a battalion of the Rifle Brigade. This had moved up to a bivouac on the edge of Oosthoek, and I walked over one morning to discuss the attack with the Colonel and his officers. They were very anxious about some alleged wire in front of the Steenbeek, which I undertook to crush for them if I ever got so far. In the event I got nowhere near it, and I was of little or no use to these infantry. I am afraid that not many of the officers I met that morning were left after the battle, for the 117th Brigade, to which the battalion belonged, suffered cruelly on the 31st.

III.

During the night of the 24th-25th July the tanks of 21 Company (less No. 10 Section) moved from Oosthoek Wood to Halfway House. On the 24th I had been working late with my men on G 46, making the final preparations for our own departure the following evening, and as we left the wood about seven o’clock we met the eight crews marching in to their tanks. Their move was attended by one disaster. The night was exceedingly dark, rain had been falling, and the surface of the narrow winding track which I have described as leading through the wood to Hospital Farm had become greasy and treacherous. A male tank, swinging too far to avoid a tree, slid off the cambered road into the wide moat which surrounded the farm. The water rose a foot above the floor boards, instantly putting the engine out of action. As nothing could be done that night, the tank (whose roof was barely level with the road) was camouflaged and left, the crew bivouacking close at hand. The remainder pushed on, and after being harassed by some shelling which fortunately did no harm, parked up under the bushes at Halfway House. Owing to the postponement of the attack for another three days, the sunken tank, having been towed ashore the next night with infinite difficulty, was got running again in time to rejoin the company before the latter moved on to Frascati.

About five o’clock on the afternoon of the 25th I was having tea with Kessel, Merchant, and some others under the lee of a tank. We were due to start our own move at nine that evening. Having already consumed our own tea ration, we were drinking an extraordinary mud-coloured beverage infused from one of those compressed concoctions, strongly resembling tobacco, which friends and relations used to send out as being especially suitable for active service. Possibly the sinister influence of this drug was accountable in part for the fact that none of us were looking forward to the forthcoming approach-march with the proper military enthusiasm. It was true that the day was humid and depressing; that the wood was squelchy underfoot and smelt like a badly-kept mausoleum hurriedly washed in petrol; and that some of 21 Company, having returned in lorries from Halfway House for a few hours’ rest at Lovie, had brought discouraging reports of the route and the general conditions nearer to the line. Brisk shelling was in progress. The tanks of another battalion, uncomfortably embedded among heavy howitzers under the trees of Les Trois Tours, had come in for the enemy’s counter-battery work and had passed an extremely unpleasant night. I will not speak for the rest of us, but I know that I, for one, was greatly relieved when our tea was interrupted by the arrival of a runner with the order cancelling our move. Owing to the effects of the rain, the attack had been put off once more until the last day of the month. In the long-run it is obvious wisdom to get thankless duties over and done with as soon as possible; and the Army’s inveterate habit of issuing eleventh-hour instructions is better indulged in advancing than in postponing battles; but at the time one does not always reason so philosophically. Also one feels a little more like the gay and careless warrior of the newspapers at certain junctures than at others. Somehow we had not felt either gay or careless that afternoon. And now we could go back to bed like Christians or reprieved criminals, and spend a further three days of grace revising once more our testamentary dispositions (if any) in comparative safety and comfort.

A thoughtful act on the part of the Intelligence Branch marked this interval and helped to amuse us. I have spoken already of the sketches of church towers and other remote landmarks with which we had been provided. There was now issued to each tank commander, with every circumstance of urgency, a minute drawing about the size of a blue Mauritius postage-stamp, depicting the tower and spire of Hooglede Church. No one knew where Hooglede was, or had ever heard of it. It was generally believed to be near Brussels. Research on the map eventually discovered it to be a village north-west of Roullers, some nine miles beyond our farthest objective for the first day. As a sign of optimism in high quarters this valedictory gift was appreciated; but, being under no delusions ourselves as to the difficulties before us, we felt that there was small hope of our visiting the place in the immediate future. In the event, of course, after three months’ hard fighting the British Army was still six miles away from Hooglede, and did not reach it for another year.

Yet, curiously enough, as it happened, there seemed for a few hours a possibility of Hooglede and many other distant villages coming quickly into the scheme of things. For one effect of the last postponement of our attack was to mislead the enemy to a certain extent. Still anticipating it on the 28th, he withdrew his troops the night before from 3000 yards of his front line on the canal opposite Boesinghe. The Guards and French immediately crossed the canal, occupied the abandoned trenches, and during the night constructed seventeen bridges. Subsequent attempts to eject them were repulsed. This affair started a fine crop of rumours about a more pronounced retreat along the whole front. But the Germans had no intention whatever of retreating. The evacuation of the canal trenches either was a blunder or had been designed as a trap, and evidently was regretted. Our movements, therefore, were carried out as arranged; and on the evening of the 28th, about dusk, the tanks of 19 Company and my own section began their approach-march to Halfway House.

No one ever troubles to inquire how tanks are brought up to a battlefield. They are there, miraculously, at zero, and that is enough. Approach-marches are usually described in a few words, and their details taken for granted. Yet they can be, and often are, the most exhausting and nerve-racking feature of tank operations. They have to be undertaken at night. Lights must be shown very sparingly, if at all, even inside the tanks. The glow of a cigarette, or a white handkerchief or map, are often all that an officer can use to direct his driver. The early stages of a march are made commonly over roads and tracks, both for help in guidance and to avoid leaving spoors which hostile aeroplanes could observe or photograph; and the breakdown of one machine on a bridge or in some street or defile may hold up all the others behind it, to say nothing of any traffic on the route. Notwithstanding the greatest care in constructing time-tables, no trek is complete that does not involve meeting and consequent trouble with transport. Light railways, timber-tracks, bridges, ground-lines, pipe-lines, air-lines--all these must suffer, in spite of precautions. The rate of progress will be maddeningly slow. Although even a Mark IV. could move at a fair speed under normal conditions, it is impossible to maintain anything like this when moving a dozen or two by night into battle. There will be frequent halts to let those behind close up. It is almost certain that somebody will become ditched, or break a fan-belt, or get on fire, or fall into trouble of some kind. Such accidents, trifling in a peaceful daylight trek, become agonising amid the circumstances of an approach-march by night, when repairs have to be effected in the dark, and when prolonged delay may be fatal. In many cases all ranks will have been working most of the preceding day. They will be up all night. Probably they will work again during part of the next day, and will be moving once more throughout a second night. They are lucky if they can obtain any genuine rest during the few hours allotted for that purpose. Those hours are sure to be spent in the forward battery area, liable to be shelled or gassed at any time, and always intolerably noisy. And as the tanks approach the front line there is an increasing likelihood of their coming under shell-fire which they can neither dodge nor counter. An infantry column so caught can at least scatter or take cover; but the tank crews remain boxed up in their crawling machines, committed to a definite route which may lead into the heart of the trouble, seeing and hearing little or nothing, but imagining much, and with none of the stimulants of action to sustain them. Probably their officers are compelled still to walk outside as guides. Add finally to all this the inevitable strain and anxiety involved in the general situation; the actual physical labour attending all work connected with tanks; the extreme heat endured for hours by the crews; and it will be apparent that the latter are not exactly fresh when the time comes to go into action.

Justice has never been done to this side of tank warfare, or to the Corps’ achievements in respect of it. Before every one of the hundred actions in which tanks have taken part, some such ordeal as I have described, with variations for better or worse according to circumstances, has been undergone. Excluding the very early days, when everything was against the new unit, the occasions on which the great majority of every section or company detailed (often at the last moment) for action did not arrive at the front line in time were extremely rare. Far more often than not every machine arrived in time. The climax of this efficiency was reached in the last battle before Amiens, on the 8th August 1918, when out of 435 tanks collected hastily from all over France, 430 started in front of the infantry at zero. But even the infantry never fully appreciated, because they were never made to understand, the amount of sheer labour and persistence put forth on their behalf. They called for tanks from somewhere at three or four hours’ notice--and the tanks came. And that, after all, was what chiefly mattered.

Our trek to Halfway House was accomplished with only one serious hitch. On account of the accident to the tank at Hospital Farm, we were to avoid that place by taking a parallel track through the wood which increased slightly the length of the route. My section was to lead. About an hour before we started something went wrong with the differential of Merchant’s tank, and he did not leave with the rest. When, about nine o’clock in the evening, the other two tanks of No. 10 pulled out from the trees south of the military road and swung on to the timbered thoroughfare, G 46 was waiting on the north side to fall in behind. 19 Company followed after me. Spectators from the infantry bivouacs now springing up again in the wood lined the roadside to watch the long line of tanks moving off in the dusk, but all wheeled traffic had been stopped or diverted for an hour. Before that period was up all the fifteen tanks had left the road, and were proceeding northward along the lane under the trees. The night was misty but clear, and lighted brilliantly with stars; but there was no moon, and in the wood it was very dark. To guide my driver as I walked in front of G 46, I had a half-folded map thrust under the belt and cross-strap on my back.

It must have been nearly midnight when I cleared the wood at the point called Dirty Bucket Corner, and swung to the right along a road leading eventually to Vlamertinghe. In the open one could see very clearly. The leading tank (M’Elroy’s) of 19 Company should have been close behind me, but there was no sign of it or any other. Entirely unknown to me, a singular accident had happened. A few hundred yards farther back in the wood we had crossed a broad-gauge military railroad. As M’Elroy’s machine was actually astride the metals a light engine came down them at a fair speed, struck the tank broadside on, pushed it into a hedge, and was itself derailed. The tank was uninjured, except for a bent plate on the sponson, but several of the crew were cut about, and all were badly shaken. M’Elroy himself, being outside, was unhurt. A considerable delay ensued, the light engine having to be towed out of the way, or back on to the line; and the tank was left by the roadside while a spare crew was sent for. In the meantime, knowing nothing of all this, No. 10 Section had carried on. It was not for another hour that 19 Company overtook me again. We had then left the Vlamertinghe road, and were on Rum Road itself, nearing our destination. The clutch on G 46, for reasons already explained, had not been tested, and was slipping badly; and I had to halt for ten minutes or so while it was adjusted, thus letting several of the following tanks pass me. This was our last delay. Alden and Brassington, in front of me, already were parking up their tanks at Halfway House, where the rest of 21 Company’s machines had been lying for three days; and here I soon joined them. Everything was quiet in the neighbourhood, except for the eternal uproar of our own artillery; but we learnt from the guard that Les Trois Tours, whose trees we could see dimly, had been shelled again that evening. It was at this juncture that we were astonished by the arrival of Merchant’s tank, which we had left in Oosthoek Wood with its differential casing removed. The repairs had been effected very rapidly, and the tank had then covered the whole route on fourth speed, actually overtaking us in little more than an hour. The enclosure at Halfway House was rectangular, and to enter it we had to cross a wide ditch, choked with ferocious brambles, and break through a towering hedge. My section was to lie up under some long neglected fruit trees and another hedge on the far side; and a good deal of manœuvring--infuriating work in the dark with the Mark IV. secondary gears--was required before we were satisfactorily hidden. Camouflage nets had then to be strung up to the trees, pegged down, and supplemented by foliage. All ranks, as fast as their tanks were secured for the night, helped to efface our tracks through the hedge and across the enclosure. The work was finished about 2 A.M., and, leaving two men per crew and one officer per section with the tanks, the rest of us trailed thankfully back to the beginning of Rum Road, where lorries were waiting to carry us to Lovie for a final rest in camp. Such arrangements for one’s comfort, it may be noted, were peculiar in my experience to this operation alone. They were made possible by the length of the route, and could be applied only to this short initial stage. Usually they are out of the question.

The ensuing evening, that of the 29th, we returned by lorry to Halfway House at dusk. The dangerous part of the journey, including the crossing of the canal, had now to be accomplished. Rain had fallen again, the sky was clouded, and the night promised to be a black one. It was indeed already very dark when 21 Company pulled out of the enclosure. A section of 19 Company followed, and then my own. My exasperating clutch, although it had been tightened up during the day, proved to be still refractory. I was obliged to halt again after a while to make a further adjustment; and as the operation was not a lengthy one, I asked the tank commander behind me (Lynch, who was killed thirty-six hours later) to wait, as I wished to maintain my position in the column. We were off again, in fact, very shortly after. But at this stage every one was becoming anxious and irritable, and the stoppage brought exalted personages raving about G 46, clamouring for it to proceed. As it happened, haste would have helped nobody, for about this time serious disaster overtook the section in front. Our route left Rum Road a quarter of a mile from the canal, and took thence a narrow track leading direct to Marengo Causeway. This track was bounded by a dense hedge, with trees, on one hand, and by a deep ditch on the other: its surface was greasy after the rain, and the two leading tanks of 19 Company slid off into the ditch. They still blocked the track, and until they were got out no one could advance. I soon caught up this paralysed advance-guard, where crews were labouring with booms and shovels, and officers were peering at their watches and whispering anxiously. Henriques, the Reconnaissance Officer of 19 Company, came to me muttering that “things were very serious.” As indeed they were, for the nights at the end of July are short: it was already nearly one o’clock; and it was essential for us all to reach the shelter of the trees at Frascati before morning. If dawn found any tanks in the open east of the canal, all sorts of calamities would have ensued. The whole offensive would have been jeopardised, as our presence so far forward must have advertised its immediate onfall to the enemy, to say nothing of the consequences to ourselves. Added to these apprehensions for the morrow, there fell the present fear that at any moment the Germans might begin to shell the canal and its approaches. Their gunners had been very quiet so far that night; but if they chose to indulge in their favourite pastime while our fifteen tanks were held up in a line, a couple of hundred yards from the Causeway, the results probably would be highly unpleasant. Very fortunately, nothing happened, and the difficulty was overcome. The ditched tanks got themselves out, and we crawled one by one on to Marengo Causeway, which 21 Company had crossed safely half an hour before. Here again our luck held: at this most critical point in the whole route not a shell fell to disturb us, and the whole column, passing over without mishap, entered the dismal wilderness of old trenches, wire, smashed trees, and shell-holes on the farther side. From here onwards our route had been taped by the R.O.’s, and but for this assistance half of the tanks must have ditched themselves or lost their way. The broken ground, which had looked nasty enough by day, became appalling in the pitchy darkness; and I recall this final stage of the journey as a long black nightmare of fatigue and apprehension. There was no track, and in many places even the tape had vanished, displaced or buried by the leading tanks. Over the communication trenches still in use narrow wooden bridges had been built, and these required skilful negotiation. As I walked in front of G 46, knowing that all my driver could see of me was the faint white patch on my back, I was continually falling into shell-holes, tripping over debris, or getting hung up in wire; and with the tank lumbering blindly along a few feet behind me, these accidents put me in infinite terror of being run over. At least one tank commander, Alden, had in fact a very narrow escape from death or injury that night through becoming entangled in a mass of wire. His tank cleared him by inches while he was still struggling to get free, and then the track caught the wire and pulled him helplessly after. He was being carried on to the roof when the driver somehow discovered what had happened and pulled up.

The enemy now began to interfere, to add to our discomfort, by bombarding the whole neighbourhood fairly heavily with gas-shells. There was a battery of 4.5 howitzers firing in the open close to our route, and possibly this was his target. Very fortunately we had been issued with a special type of box-respirator, in which the goggles and mouth-mask were separate, and thus were still able, at a risk to our eyes, to see our way--more or less. With the ordinary fixed eye-pieces it would have been next to impossible to see anything at all. As it was, we were merely extraordinarily uncomfortable and anxious. The Germans threw over little or no lachrymatory gas and no mustard-oil, which then was just coming into fashion; but we could not be certain about the latter, as it has no smell; and it was the reverse of pleasant to have to stumble along in the dark with our eyes exposed to what might have been doses of this atrocious decoction. All around us, for about half an hour, there sounded the soft detonations peculiar to gas-shells. And in the middle of the bombardment, either through this or some other agency, a pile of cordite charges by the howitzer battery caught fire and flared brilliantly for a few minutes. I was passing in front of the guns at the time, and I could see that one of them had been hit, and was lying out of action with a broken wheel; while at the others the gunners still toiled in the glare like black automatons. Behind them the unhappy shattered trees along the canal bank were illuminated eerily, and in front of me a line of tanks was visible dipping and rolling over the shell-holes. I was afraid that this brief conflagration would draw some heavy retaliation from the enemy, but he contented himself with gas; and while the fire lasted it was of service to us in lighting up our route. Even the gas-shelling presently ceased; and with no further adventures beyond periodical stumbles and searches for the tape, we found ourselves at length under the black shadow of the Frascati trees. We were only just in time. Dawn was breaking as the last tank drew in; and we had taken nearly seven hours to cover 5000 yards.

IV.

Frascati Farm stood just east of the road which ran, parallel to the canal, from Pilkem through La Brique to Ypres. The trees about the farm, their scars then concealed in part by heavy foliage, came down to the roadside; and to the right of them, as one approached from the causeways, a gap in a hedge gave entrance to a shell-pitted field. Our tanks, having been led through this gap, now lay parked up, nose to tail, against some immense overgrown bushes which lined the southern edge of the timber. The camouflage nets, joined together, stretched over the whole long line. As day broke we could see some very new shell-holes in the field; and we learnt that the place had been shelled that night while 21 Company was moving in. One officer had been hit in the leg, but insisted on staying with his tank and taking it into action--a piece of plucky quixotry which kept him in hospital afterwards for many months.

We spent that day, the 30th, in attempts to get sleep or at least rest under the tanks and camouflage netting. The weather was nondescript and depressing--a lowering sky threatened rain, but none fell. Throughout the day German aeroplanes came and went with impunity above us, and periodically shells whistled over the trees and burst in black plumes of earth beyond the hedge along the far side of our field, between us and Ypres. None, happily, fell any nearer. Of Ypres itself, on the low ground about a mile away, the higher ruins, dominated by the ragged tower of the Cloth Hall, were just visible above the hedge top. The town was being shelled continually, so that at times quite a haze of the familiar red-brick dust floated over it. The uproar of our own artillery seemed less intense, perhaps because we were now in front of the most advanced field-guns.

During those hours of waiting the incident I remember most clearly was a discussion we had at lunch-time on the subject of English country places we had known. It seems now an odd thing to have been sitting there, in that forlorn region, our backs against a tank, peering through the camouflage netting at the shells bursting in Ypres, and comparing the peaceful beauties of Sussex and Cornwall and the Eastern shires. Of the little company of us gathered there, Kessel was a Cornish man whose work was in the north; Merchant was an East Anglian from India; Brassington came from the valley of the Eden; and Alden and myself were by way of being Cockneys of French extraction or interests. Between us we had seen a fair part of England, and there was a peculiar fascination, in the circumstances, in recalling pleasant holidays and journeys achieved in those remote days when soldiering was the last of all human professions we ever expected to adopt. All of us, I think, as very normal unheroic people, would have given a good deal then to be back in our own country.

A little later, toward tea-time, Major Fernie, then commanding 19 Company, appeared on the scene to wish us good luck and issue final instructions. Company headquarters during the battle were to be established in the dug-out at Hill Top Farm, a pile of rubble and sandbags about a fragment of wall which stood up like a huge tooth midway between Frascati and the front line. Throughout the expansion of the Tank Corps the company has remained the unit of battle; the battalion is virtually a brigade, and advanced battalion headquarters lives during operations with the infantry division or army corps concerned. In this case Colonel Hankey, a few hours before zero, established himself at the 39th Divisional Headquarters in Oosthoek Wood.

As dusk fell we began to clear for action. We filled up with petrol from the dump among the trees and piled there all camouflage nets, tarpaulins, and spare kit. A tank prepared for action, cluttered up as it is with necessary stores and ammunition, has no room for other impedimenta. The crew, wearing ordinary workshop overalls, take with them only revolvers. In the middle of this work the enemy, who had left us in comparative peace all day, started to shell the neighbourhood with gas; and for some time we had to carry on handicapped by box-respirators. The tedious business of fixing spuds occupied the last hour before the move. Spuds were always carried in the box on the roof until the last possible moment, as any hard surface, such as that of a road, crushed them and put a dangerous strain on the hard steel track-plates. Each tank carried forty-four of these iron shoes, of which we had to clamp on about thirty that night at Frascati--a laborious process with stiff nuts and bolts, and an inadequate supply of spanners. My crew and I were able to fix only half of our quota in the time, and the remainder we flung into a ditch under the bushes, where for all I know they lie to this day, unless they have been discovered by some puzzled Belgian labourer.

At 10.45 engines were started up, and at 11 o’clock we moved off. One tank of 19 Company developed some internal trouble and was left behind. The trek for a long time was devoid of any incident. The Reconnaissance officers led: my section was now the last in the line; and I simply followed the tank in front of me. I can remember nothing that happened until we reached Hammond’s Corner, a road-junction near Hill Top Farm and about a thousand yards from the front line. We were so well ahead of time that we halted for an hour at this point. The night was very quiet, for there was a lull in the gun-fire. The sky was clouded and dark; but unceasingly, around the curve of the Salient--to our right and left and even in our rear--the Very lights rose slowly and hung for a space and faded, their diffused radiance reflected in the crater pools and imprinting continually along the horizon ephemeral silhouettes of naked and eerie trees. The Germans were using then a very pretty variant of this illumination (or so I suppose it to have been), a kind of slow rocket that soared up obliquely in straight bars of brilliant light, one below the other. In fact the Ypres salient, depressing in its utter ruin in the daytime and infinitely dreary and forbidding toward dusk, assumed an inhuman beauty when night had fallen and this semicircle of wavering incandescence began its deliberate and irregular rise and fall.

I was still leading G 46 from outside when we halted; and after a while I pulled myself up on to the towing shackle in front of the tank to talk to my driver through his flap. I was so tired that in this attitude, sitting on the unsympathetic shackle with my head on one track and my feet on the other, I fell asleep. I was told afterwards that several shells burst about us and exploded a small dump near at hand, but I slept through it all. Just before we moved off again a machine-gun barrage was started to cover the noise of our approach to the front line. I now got inside the tank and took the brakes beside Johnstone, as with the help of the continual stream of Very lights it was become quite a simple matter to follow the machines in front and even to see from the cab the tape which the R.O.’s had laid down earlier that night. Having still ample time, we crawled forward now at a snail’s pace, and eventually pulled up once more a quarter of an hour before zero--which was at 3.50 A.M.--at a point 300 yards from Forward Cottage, where we were to cross the front line. As we were not required to overtake the infantry before the second German system was reached, we were to start at this interval behind them. While we waited, the thought struck me forcibly (and has recurred with every later tank action in which I have taken part) that if the enemy had used a few mobile searchlights at intervals throughout the night, sweeping the area immediately behind our line for a minute at a time, he could hardly have failed to discover us sooner or later. Now, for example, the twenty-three tanks, covered from view only by the darkness, were drawn up in line ahead on a forward slope little more than a quarter of a mile from his nearest trenches. The presence of these machines in the Salient was well known to him, and the attack had been awaited for days. A number of searchlights on motor-trucks, as used for anti-aircraft work, might have been brought up to the summit of the Pilkem Ridge at many points; and if employed with discretion for short periods and moved continually, our gunners would have found it very difficult to hit them; while once our tanks had been seen and held in the rays they might have been knocked to pieces in a few minutes. At Ypres, it is true, the Germans (with some justice) were not greatly afraid of tanks; but in later battles, particularly during the final autumn of the war, when elaborate road systems in fair condition ran behind the armies, the value of mobile searchlights for countering expected tank attacks would appear to have been so considerable as to justify any sacrifice involved. But on no occasion, so far as I am aware, were they used for this purpose. In the course of our last advance successive assaults, which might have been disorganised and possibly ruined by a premature discovery of tanks moving up, were allowed to come as a surprise.

The ultimate minutes before zero passed without event. With the aid of the Very lights I endeavoured once more to read the map which hung in front of me, and peered continually at my clock. A tot of whisky was passed round the crew. The engine, just ticking over, drowned by its throbbing the noise of the machine-gun barrage, which still continued. In front the long line of tanks stood motionless on the gentle slope. And so, in a dim-lit silent world we waited for the moment of attack.