The Americans started in with 216 light tanks, a year after the British
had used them in smashing the German defenses.]
“Of course there are places a tank can’t go. You read a lot about how a
tank loves mud. Don’t you believe it. A tank can slither around in mud
just like an automobile. Of course it can go, but it can’t climb at the
same angle on mud as on dry ground and somehow we always did fight in
the mud. Mud didn’t stop us of course, but it made it more difficult.
On dry ground we can climb 45 degrees, and 51 degrees in reverse.
“You hear a lot about the way a tank can crawl over trenches. But
that’s the big heavy tank. The little fellow can’t run over a trench
the way it can down and up a shell crater. The Renault is tail heavy,
you see. It gets its nose across a trench all right, but if the trench
is a little too wide the heavy tail drops back into it. Then you have
to get out and dig or get another tank to come and pull you out.
That’s why two tanks together are worth four separately. They can jam
themselves up and still get along by doing the brother act with chains.
Once that I know of a tank got stuck and the second tank couldn’t pull
it out. So the officer outside signals another tank and it comes up—all
this under fire, mind—and he hooks that on, too, and the two of them
pull the helpless one up and over. He got the D. S. C. for it, that
officer.
“It’s not nice when you’re stalled, you know. As long as you can move
around, the 77 has a hard time getting you. But if you get stuck
somewhere it doesn’t take a Boche gunner so very long to get your
range. That’s why we were so anxious to have self-starters put on the
American tanks, when we thought we were going to have American tanks.
If there had been any self-starters on our Renaults we’d probably be
shy about twenty casualties. Engine stalls, Boche gets busy, chap
inside struggles with a crank, takes time, 77 lands, signal back
for a reserve tank to come on into action. No, they didn’t put the
self-starters on. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know.