“Sure, the American tanks were good tanks. We never used them in
action that I know of. Those I saw got to France, or got where they
might have been used, after the Armistice. But they were sure American
all over—too much American, if you know what I mean. It’s a national
failing, I guess, this business of being ingenious. There was so much
ingenuity about those tanks there wasn’t always room for the crew. For
instance, machine gun belts. When you use them, they are rolled up and
in a carrier. Some wise tank builder decided all the ammunition in a
machine gun tank ought to be in carriers, rolled up ready for use. When
he got through, there wasn’t any room inside for the crew! No sense to
it, of course; the same amount of ammunition stores flat, and leaves
plenty of room, and it only takes a few seconds to roll up a belt and
put it in a carrier.
“Then there was the compass. Some one must have read that British tanks
carried compasses. So they did, until the tank crew could throw it
away. So our American tanks came over with the handsomest compasses
inside you ever saw; regular ship affairs, gimbals and all! Now, of
course, that’s all foolishness. In the first place there wasn’t room
for the compass and the crew. In the second place, when you start the
engine, the compass does a fox trot, and keeps on whirling; it’s no
good as a compass. And if it was, there wouldn’t be any sense in it;
there’s a map stuck up right under your nose and that’s all you need,
not to mention a few officers with flags telling you where to go, if
they are not sitting on top going with you.
“Then there was the speedometer. Why any one should imagine a tank crew
needed a speedometer I don’t know. But there it was, ready to tell us
just how fast we were going. Maybe they thought, down in Washington, we
were going to establish a tank speed record or something.
“And the hook—I mustn’t forget the hook. It’s so typically American—a
device born of our national tendency to economise time. To put a hook
in at the top of the tank meant at least two hours’ work. In 100 tanks
that was 200 hours or 24 working days, slowing up production. The idea
of the hook was that it would be so convenient when a crane had to lift
the tank. Now the average tank gets lifted by a crane just four or six
times; on a car at the factory, off the car, on the ship, off the ship,
and maybe on and off a car again. So to save the six or twelve minutes
it would take a crew to slip a chain around the tanks, they put a hook
at the top, because it was efficient!
[Illustration:
_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._