SUSPENSE--THE “SAVAGE RABBITS” EPISODE--THE ENEMY’S INTENTIONS
The story of the Tank Corps from the beginning of February to nearly
the end of March 1918 is one of waiting and expectancy, of strategic
moves to unexpected places, of diligent rehearsal for first nights upon
which the curtain never rose, of endless preparations for events which
never happened.
And through all the moves, in all the odd billets, or in the open
fields, when--in hourly expectation of the German attack--Tanks
and their crews lay ready under the hedges, run the Tank Corps’
Pinkerton-like efforts at self-improvement, its determination to finish
its winter training.
From before the middle of January we had been perfectly aware that the
enemy meant to strike and to strike hard. He held a wasting security.
We were waxing and he was waning. He was still our superior, still had
more men available, but by Midsummer he knew that the Allies would
outnumber him.
He had troubles, we knew, at home too, troubles for which the only
salve was victory.
We had besides long known that before the war ended, whenever and
however that end might come, we must expect a last desperate struggle.
It would be the last spring of the wounded beast in which he might
still find our throats, the last staggering blast of the hurricane by
which the ship might still be confounded and overwhelmed.
Every sign spoke of the coming storm, but none told from which quarter
we must expect it. The Germans were concentrating in such a way--at the
base of the great salient formed by their line--that they could plant
their blow wherever it might at the last moment seem good to them.
For better or worse, it was decided that our available forces were to
be impartially distributed all along the line. Not that we had very
much choice, as with our limited resources a concentration at any one
strategic point must imply virtual gaps in our defence elsewhere.
For we had in January taken over an additional forty miles of line, and
the men for whom the High Command in France had so frequently pleaded
had not been sent out to them.
We were in for a lean three months, and to hold the extended line was
as much as we could hope to accomplish.
The British and French Spring Campaign must be a defensive one. There
was no longer a Russian front, and till the Americans were ready--which
could not be till Midsummer at earliest--the Germans would have a
numerical preponderance of nearly a quarter of a million men. Besides
this, their position on interior lines and their superior lateral
railway communications could at any moment give them an overwhelming
local superiority.
However, we had faced worse odds before. We could form a strong line
and cunning schemes of defence against which the enemy would hammer in
vain. Our first defence was a deep forward zone. It consisted first of
an outpost line and second of a “line of resistance.”
The line of resistance was extremely carefully laid out. About every
mile redoubts of special strength were so arranged that on this sector
an attack would be entrapped into our wire and held exposed to a
cross-fire from our machine-guns.
The line was, in fact, to offer “patches” of resistance, and so break
up the ordered advance of the enemy, who was to arrive at the next
line, the “battle zone,” weakened and disorganised.
Here the main fight was to take place, and upon this zone we lavished
all our skill and industry, and, having faith, we prepared no serious
positions in rear of it.
The Tanks were spaced out all along a sixty-mile front.
Near Lens in the 1st Army area was the 1st Tank Brigade.
The 2nd Brigade was in 3rd Army Reserve at Haplincourt, near Bapaume.
The 3rd Brigade--which was in process of being equipped with Whippet
Tanks--was also in 3rd Army Reserve.
The 4th Brigade was attached to the 5th Army and established itself in
camps near Péronne.
The 5th Brigade was in process of forming, and therefore had no
definite task allotted to it, though, as we shall see, the 13th (its
nucleus) Battalion actually saw a considerable amount of fighting.
Each Tank Brigade got out a defence scheme in conjunction with the Army
to which it was attached. As a rule the Tanks--which had been moved up
as secretly as possible--were to lie in ambush till the last moment,
and then, emerging--as General Elles described it--“like Savage Rabbits
from their holes,” were to fall upon the Germans in flank or rear.
His phrase struck the fancy of the Tank Corps, and the whole of this
period is frequently referred to _tout court_ as “Savage Rabbits,”
somewhat to the bewilderment of the uninitiated.
II
Their schemes prepared, their Tanks in position, after an exhaustive
reconnaissance, the Tank Corps waited, a process which all troops find
both tedious and demoralising, unless some really profitable means can
be found of employing their time.
For the Tank Corps the need of the moment was further training. Several
of the Battalions had been dragged untimely from half-finished courses,
several were almost fresh from Wool, and had still most of their
tactical training to do. Everywhere there were units and individuals
who had lost “school attendances” to make up.
The great difficulty was that Battalions and even Companies were so
spread out and scattered that it was almost impossible to collect the
students for instruction.
The regular curriculums were out of the question, so the directors of
Tank training immediately set to work to evolve new courses that would
fit the altered circumstances.
In some ways the Reconnaissance Side fared best.
Their chief instructional material--the actual country to be fought
over--was there for their students to study, and even when the pupils
were so scattered that a sufficient audience could not be collected
for a formal lecture, many ingenious little practical schemes could be
carried out and written work could always be done.
They had a fairly definite standard to aim at. Had the battalions
remained in the training areas, every officer and man would have been
put through a five days’ course in Reconnaissance. Under normal
conditions such courses were arranged more or less as follows:
_On the first day_, the students heard an introductory lecture,
practised chalk layering, heard a short discourse on map reading,
did a practical comparison of map and country upon which they had
to answer questions.
_On the second day_, visualising country from a map was taught, and
practice indoors was gone through with a model. In the afternoon
panorama sketching was practised, a short lecture heard, some
visualising was done and the characterisation of landmarks was
practised, the day being finished up by night guiding.
_On the third morning_, close observation of a certain sector,
involving sketches and notes, was undertaken, and visibility
practices carried out. Later, the students were taken for an
“observation march,” and having described the features of the
country they had traversed, they had to write a report upon the new
sector which they had observed in the morning, and upon this report
they were later questioned.
_On the fourth day_, a new sector was visited, upon which they had
previously made notes from a map. These notes they had to compare
with reality, and to notice whether their imagination had been
faulty. A lecture on obstacles commonly found on approach marches
followed, and one on aerial photographs with practical work. Night
work followed, with special reference to the study of the stars.
_On the fifth day_, oblique and other aerial photographs were
compared with the actual ground, and a lecture was delivered
summing up the special points of the course.
Sometimes, however, during the “Savage Rabbit” period, lectures were
possible, and for these occasions a rather new type of discourse was
evolved, in which the broader aspects of Reconnaissance and of the
study of country were dealt with.
Local history was recalled:--how men had lived and fought in the
villages and cornfields that lay immediately about them; how that great
abbey church that stood alone was erected by a group of pious merchants
as a thankoffering for their town’s escape from the plague; how to this
little town the Revolution had brought a Committee of Public Safety,
and how it had held its red assize in the coffee-room of the Hôtel de
l’Europe, or how Bonaparte had lain at this or that château on his way
to the Camp at Boulogne.
Or again, the lecture might be more strictly military and concern the
place of Reconnaissance amongst the arts of war, and the action and
reaction of one arm of the Service upon another--the ever-present
trilogy of wire, trench and machine-gun, new theories of artillery
work, the latest fashions in tactics or the effects of the latest
poison-gas.
Then, where some isolated Tank Company or even section lay ready day
and night by its machines and lectures were impossible, an itinerant
instructor would set the exiles little schemes to carry out.
The two following exercises are typical:--
“Two small parties of officers go at different times to positions
from which a good view is obtainable. They pick out landmarks,
etc., and their peculiarities, taking notes or making sketches.
From these notes or sketches each party writes out three or four
questions on landmarks, general observation, routes taken, etc.
On their return the two parties exchange their questions, answers
are written, and these answers returned to the writers of the
questioners to correct.
“Catch questions, such as ‘How many windows had such and such a
house?’ will, of course, be discountenanced, and only useful tests
permitted.
“Exercise II.--The student was asked to sketch the outline of a
cottage from about 800 yards distant. He then had to consider from
the position of the house on the map, and the contour lines of the
ground, what the appearance of that cottage would be likely to be
from a different point of view. Of this hypothetical elevation he
had then to make an outline sketch, and finally to walk over the
ground and compare his imaginings with actuality.”
Practices for approach marches were also given by means of an exercise
on tape laying and the taking of compass bearings.
III
And still the Germans stayed their hands, and still we waited and
speculated upon what the coming campaign might hold for us. For the
Tank Corps it seemed certainly to portend a new form of warfare--the
Tank duel.
All sorts of things were rumoured concerning the German preparations,
and the sheets of the Tank Corps Intelligence Summary for late February
are full of little items of information of a perfectly new kind.
Tanks of some sort were certainly being made at Krupp’s.
Prisoners had been caught who described them as larger and heavier than
the British machines. We had reason to believe that men were being
withdrawn from certain other units to form Tank crews.
Then, in the next day’s Summary, it would be reported that airmen had
found out that in certain Regimental, Brigade, and Divisional training
schemes which were being carried out by the enemy, horses and wagons
were being used, representing Tanks. Combined infantry and Tank attacks
of all sorts appeared to be being rehearsed. Again, some recently
captured prisoners said that a few derelict Tanks, which the Germans
had taken at Cambrai, were being put into order, they seemed to think,
as training rather than as fighting machines.
It is to be imagined that the notion of the new warfare, of meeting
their kind in combat for the first time, was exceedingly interesting to
all ranks of the Tank Corps; and there was not a single hut in a single
camp where wonderful new ideas for tactics and manœuvres wherewith to
annihilate the new enemy, were not really elaborated.
We did not know that the bitterness and anxiety of a long retreat
lay before us; a retreat whose gall and wormwood were to enter into
our very souls, and of whose confused events it is even now almost
impossible to write either with accuracy or impartiality.