“RAZZLE DAZZLE”
It was at Beaumont-Hamel, about September 16th, that I got my chance to
command a “tank.”
The dear girl was named “Razzle Dazzle.” She was very young, having
been in service only three months, but rather portly. Matter of fact,
she weighed something over thirty tons. And in no way could you call
the dear little woman pretty. She was a pallid gray and mud-splashed
when I got her and there was no grace in the bulging curves of her
steel shape. Or of her conical top. Or her ponderous wheels.
The fact is that she showed every aspect of being a bad, scrappy old
dearie. The minute I saw her in her lovely ugliness I knew she would
like trouble and lots of it. Her metabolism was a marvel. She carried
a six-hundred-horse-power motor. And out of her gray steel hoods
protruded eight guns. An infernal old girl, you can bet she was. All
ready to make battle in large quantities.
When I boarded “Razzle Dazzle” she was full of dents. She had rocked
around among several trench charges. But the reason for my assignment
to her was prosaic. Her captain had not been killed. He was just
sick--some stomach complaint. I was drafted on an hour’s notice to the
job, this, because of long training in handling rapid-fire guns.
It was all new to me, but highly interesting. My crew consisted of
seven men--five of them well experienced. And a black cat. Although
she was a lady-cat she had been named “Joffre” and I can’t tell you
why because I never received any explanation on this point myself. But
“Joffre” was very friendly and insisted on sitting either on my knee or
shoulder from the moment I sealed myself and my men in the tank. We had
our outlook from several periscopes above the turret and from spy holes
in the turret itself.
The order had come to me about one in the morning, and it was nearly
three when we started lumbering out toward the enemy trenches. We had
about six hundred yards to cover. I knew little or nothing of her
motor power or speed. My concern was with the efficiency of the guns.
She pumped and swayed “across No Man’s Land” at about four miles an
hour. She groaned and tossed a great deal. And in fact, made such poor
progress that my regiment, the Oxfords and Bucks, beat the old dearie
to the enemy lines. Our men were among the barbed wire of the first
line, fighting it, cutting it, knocking it down before the old “Razzle
Dazzle” got into action.
But she “carried on” just the same. And when she smote the barbed-wire
obstacles, she murdered them. She crushed those barriers to what looked
like messes of steel spaghetti.
Instead of sinking into trenches as I feared she would, she crushed
them and continued to move forward. Of course, we were letting go
everything we had, and from my observation hole, I could see the
Germans didn’t like it. They had put up something of a stand against
the infantry. But against the tank they were quick to make their
farewells. It was a still black night, but under the star-shells we
could see them scurrying out of our way.
This was very sensible of them because we were certainly making a
clean sweep of everything in sight and had the earth ahead throwing up
chocolate showers of spray as if the ground we rode was an angry sea of
mud.
Every man in the tank was shouting and yelling with the excitement of
the thing and we were tossed up against each other like loosened peas
in a pod. Only Joffre remained perfectly cool. Somehow she maintained a
firm seat on my swaying shoulder and as I glanced around to peer at her
she was calmly licking a paw and then daintily wiped her face.
Suddenly out of a very clever camouflage of tree branches and shrubbery
a German machine-gun emplacement was revealed. The bullets stormed and
rattled upon the tank. But they did themselves a bad turn by revealing
their whereabouts, for we made straight for the camouflage and went
over that battery of machine guns, crunching its concrete foundation as
if it were chalk.
Then we turned about and from our new position put the Germans under an
enfilade fire that we kept up until every evidence was at hand that the
Oxfords and Bucks and supporting battalions were holding the trenches.
But this was only preliminary work cut out for the tank to do. I had
special instructions and a main objective. This was a sugar refinery.
It was a one-storied building of brick and wood with a tiled roof. It
had been established as a sugar refinery by the Germans before the war
and when this occasion arose blossomed as a fortress with a gun aimed
out of every window.
To allow it to remain standing in hostile hands would mean that the
trenches we had won could be constantly battered. Its removal was most
desirable. To send infantry against it would have involved huge losses
in life. The tank was deemed the right weapon.
It was.
And largely because “Razzle Dazzle” took matters into her own hands.
The truth is she ran away.
We rocked and plowed out of the trenches and went swaying toward the
refinery. I ordered the round-top sealed. And we beat the refinery to
the attack with our guns. But they had seen us coming and every window
facing our way developed a working gun. There were about sixteen such
windows. They all blazed at us.
My notion had been to circle the “sugar mill” with “Razzle Dazzle” and
shoot it up from all sides. We were getting frightfully rapped by the
enemy fire, but there was apparently nothing heavy enough to split the
skin of the wild, old girl. Our own fire was effective. We knocked out
all the windows and the red-tiled roof was sagging. As I say, my notion
was to circle the “mill” and I gave orders accordingly. But the “Razzle
Dazzle’s” chauffeur looked at me in distress.
“The steering gear’s off, sir,” said he.
“Stop her then and we’ll let them have it from here,” I ordered.
He made several frantic motions with the mechanism and said:
“I can’t stop her, either.”
And the “Razzle Dazzle” carried out her own idea of attack. She banged
head-on into the “mill.” She went right through a wide doorway, making
splinters of the door, she knocked against concrete pillars, supports
and walls, smashing everything in her way and bowled out of the other
side just as the roof crashed in and apparently crushed and smothered
all the artillery men beneath it.
On the way through, the big, powerful old girl bucked and rocked and
reared until we men and the black cat inside her were thrown again and
again into a jumble, the cat scratching us like a devil in her frenzy
of fear.
Closed up in the tank as we were, we could hear the roar and crash of
the falling “mill,” and from my observation port-hole I could observe
that it was most complete. The place had been reduced to a mere heap.
Not a shot came out of it at us.
But still the “Razzle Dazzle” was having her own way. Her motorist
was signaling me that he had no control of her. This was cheerful
intelligence because right ahead was a huge shell crater. She might
slide into it and climb up the other side and out. I hoped so. But she
didn’t. She hit the bottom of the pit, tried to push her way up and
out, fell back, panted, pushed up again, fell back and then just stuck
at the bottom of the well, throbbing and moaning and maybe penitent for
her recklessness.
Penitence wasn’t to do her any good. It wasn’t five minutes later when
the Germans had the range of her and began smashing us with big shells.
I ordered my men to abandon her and led them in a rush out of the
crater and into small shell holes until the storm of fire was past.
When it was, “Razzle Dazzle” was a wreck. She was cracked, distorted
and shapeless. But the runaway engine was still plainly to be heard
throbbing. Finally a last big shell sailed into the doughty tank and
there was a loud bang and a flare. Her oil reservoir shot up in an
enormous blaze.
“Razzle Dazzle” was no more. But she had accounted for the “refinery.”
And our infantry had done the rest. The German position was ours.
I was all enthusiasm for fighting “tanks.” But my superiors squelched
it. For when I asked for command of a sister of “Razzle Dazzle” next
day, a cold-eyed aide said to me:
“One tank, worth ten thousand pounds, is as much as any bally young
officer may expect to be given to destroy during his lifetime. Good
afternoon.”
He never gave me a chance to explain that it was “Razzle Dazzle’s”
own fault, how she had taken things into her own willful control. But
he did try to give me credit for what “Razzle Dazzle” had herself
accomplished. He said the destruction of the “sugar mill” had been
“fine work.”
I wonder what “Joffre” thought of it all. I don’t remember seeing her
when we fled from the “tank,” except as something incredibly swift and
black flashed past my eyes as we thrust up the lid. I sincerely hope
she is alive and well “somewhere in France.”