EXPANSION: THE BATTLES IN FRONT OF ARRAS.
I.
A big step forward had been taken; but its initial symptoms were
very modest in character. The headquarters of the Tank Corps (as the
companies had now become in fact if not in name) began life in a single
hut in the village of Beauquesne. The provisional establishment allowed
only for a Colonel Commanding (Colonel Elles), a Brigade Major, a
Staff Captain, a D.A.A. and Q.M.G., and an Intelligence Officer. The
corps was still known officially as the Heavy Section or Heavy Branch,
M.G.C., and continued to be so styled for another nine months; but
actually, the moment it became a self-contained organisation, with its
staff, its brigades and battalions, and its administrative powers, it
severed for good and all the paper ties which had connected it with its
foster-parent.
Unhappily, the official attitude toward this expansion was marked
throughout by that grudging spirit which the pedants in every
Government Department manifest when they have to adopt an innovation
against their will. There seemed to be a tacit understanding in
Whitehall that the budding enterprise must be kept in its place and
reminded continually of its youth and insecure status. It was not until
May 1917 that the commanding officer was given the rank of Brigadier,
although by that time he was commanding two tank brigades in the
field, and the headquarters of a third formed to receive the new
battalions from England. He had ten battalions under him when he became
a Major-General. Until he received that step his brigade commanders
were only colonels, so that, although in action they worked directly
with Army Corps, any infantry Brigadier was senior to them. Apart
from the slur on the corps and its officers, this deliberate omission
caused serious inconvenience. In its early days the Tank Corps needed
every ounce of authority it could get to help it through its inevitable
difficulties. Notwithstanding these, at the end of 1918 it had eighteen
battalions in France and seven more in England: it had created
immense workshops, schools, and depots in both countries: it had sent
detachments to Ireland and Egypt; and in the final months it had not
only led the infantry of three armies in almost every attack, but had
dictated in the most important respects how those attacks should be
conducted. Yet the officer directing this enormous force in the field
had the rank only of a divisional commander. This plainly was wrong
in principle. Had the Royal Air Force (let us say), whose position
was in many ways comparable, found itself in a similar predicament:
had it been cast brand-new during the war instead of developing from
a pre-war regular establishment with its machinery complete, it would
have advertised its disabilities in Parliament and in the Press, and
would have forced a terrified officialdom to invest its chief with some
fantastic title and costume invented by the ‘Daily Mail.’[8] The Tank
Corps, however, for all its youth and inexperience, has assimilated
at least one of the better traditions of the regular service: it does
not advertise. I do not suppose there are a thousand people outside
the Army who know anything about its work. As the tank itself has no
money-making future in peace-time, it can have no permanent interest
for newspaper proprietors. And for this relief, at least, much thanks.
The corps has done the better work because of it.
The antagonistic spirit to which I have adverted discovered another
fertile field for its intrigues in England. Expansion was in progress
there as well. There can be no difference of opinion as to the
unexpected common-sense which placed Colonel Elles, an experienced
soldier from a technical corps, in command in France; nor, unhappily,
can there be any as to the injustice (to put it on the lowest grounds)
of shelving Colonel Swinton at home. He also was an engineer, and
therefore peculiarly suitable for the command; but apart from that, if
any one man was responsible for the official adoption of the tank--the
solitary triumphant experiment which the war produced--it was he.
There was no so-called public pressure, engendered by the agitation
of cheap newspapers; for neither Press nor public knew anything worth
disclosing until the first machines were already at Thetford. It was
Colonel Swinton’s fertility of thought, the inspiration of his belief,
his influence and persistent advocacy, which did more than all else
to wear down the maddening barrier of departmental indifference. He
won at last some measure of support for his ideas: he organised the
new unit, and saw his hopes of it justified in the field; and then,
just as the embryo was expanding into full life and vigour, the old
influences made themselves felt once more. Somebody said (or so it
will be most charitable to suppose), “Hullo, here’s another of these
infernal sappers! This won’t do! The whole war is being run by R.E.’s
and gunners, as it is. We must get rid of him!” He was got rid of. It
was found (most opportunely) that the Committee of Imperial Defence
could do without his services no longer, and he returned to his duties
as Assistant-Secretary. An infantry Brigadier, who had performed a
very notable feat of arms in the first months of the war, but who knew
nothing about tanks, came down to Thetford to take over the command,
and gave an encouraging tone to the proceedings by declaring quite
openly, the moment he arrived, that he was come to put some discipline
into the corps, that he took no interest whatever in the tanks, and
that he did not want to see them.
In view of these and other examples of our methods and manners, the
rapid and enormous growth of the corps may seem surprising. To a great
degree it wrought its own salvation. But in fact the opposition came
mostly from those quarters at home where every reasonable being would
expect to find it, and could to that extent be disregarded as merely
symptomatic and inevitable; and the supporters of the enterprise were
far more influential. In France also there was an ever-increasing
body of opinion in its favour. And once it was taken up in earnest,
those qualities of energy and thoroughness which our race seems
always to reserve for times of crisis came fully into play. It is
indeed refreshing to turn from these petty irritations to the really
astonishing work which now was carried through in both countries. At
home, the camp at Thetford was abandoned. E and F Companies, or what
was left of them, with all their tanks and stores and baggage, were
transferred bodily to the other end of England. At Bovington, near
Wool in Dorsetshire, a hutted camp capable of holding as it stood half
a dozen infantry battalions had been taken over toward the end of
1916. By the first weeks of the new year five tank battalions and a
reinforcement depot were in process of formation there. On the great
moors which stretched away to the north there was ample room for
training; and once more rows of hangars and repair shops were springing
up, trenches were being dug and craters blown, while the inhabitants of
Wool were annoyed rather than mystified by the melodramatic precautions
attending the arrival of every trainload of tanks. Instructors appeared
like mushrooms: there were courses in tank-driving, maintenance,
gunnery, signalling, reconnaissance, bombing, and the care of pigeons.
Near Lulworth Cove, where trippers used to make pilgrimage before the
war, a battle-practice range came into being. A little later, while
Bovington itself was growing week by week, other camps were taken
over at Wareham and Swanage, until most of the military accommodation
in the Isle of Purbeck housed what once had been the Heavy Section.
And in the meantime, developments even more striking had been taking
place in France. From four rather forlorn little companies, living as
it were from hand to mouth, the corps sprang at a bound into a huge and
complicated organisation, with its own territory, works, and depots,
and every apparatus for carrying on its lethal industry. A large area,
lying between the river Ternoise and the direct Hesdin-St Pol road,
was allotted to it. To Bermicourt, a village almost in the centre of
this country, Colonel Elles removed his headquarters from Beauquesne
early in October ’16. Twenty-four acres near the river were taken for
central workshops and stores. In a few weeks, as well as the ubiquitous
hangars, immense steel and iron sheds had arisen, and continued to
grow in numbers and size until they covered six acres. Stalls for
tanks, like the old elephant stables of Carthage, lined one side of
the testing-ground. There were huts for a staff which grew to 1200
officers and men, cinema theatres, a rest-camp and hospital, a compound
holding 500 Chinese labourers, and, for a time, a reinforcement depot.
From Erin Station, eleven lines of rail, with 10,500 feet of sidings,
led into the main enclosure. A few hundred yards away was a driving
and mechanical school, with its own training-ground. And long before
the end of 1917 the original twenty-four acres of stores and workshops
were getting overcrowded. In addition to the vast accumulation of
equipment, ranging from engines and armour-plate down to split-pins and
motor-bicycle parts, there were always there two or three hundred tanks
in every stage of dismemberment or reconstruction. Every machine sent
out from England (perhaps 3000 in all) came from Le Havre to Erin to
be tested, equipped, and issued to units; and every machine salved on
the battlefield was returned there for repair. More ground, therefore,
was taken over in the area itself; a great driving school was formed
on the old front line at Wailly, near Arras; the whole reinforcement
depot moved out to Le Tréport; and a school of gunnery, capable before
long of taking three battalions at a time, came into being among the
sand-dunes and gimcrack villas of Merlimont, on the coast near Etaples.
In the Bermicourt area there was not a village now which did not house
some detail of the corps--M.T. Workshops, Salvage, Supply, and Signal
Companies, &c.--or was not reserved for billeting battalions as they
arrived from England or returned from the line to refit. It should
be needless to add that the headquarters in Bermicourt Château kept
pace with this expansion. In the beginning the staff was palpably
inadequate; before the end it was comparable in size to that of an army.
Taking it all in all, I doubt if there can be anything, even in the
exceptional records of this war, to equal for extent and variety the
growth of the technical, instructional, and supply branches of the
Tank Corps during the last two years. It was the natural habit of the
combatant units to complain loudly of all three; but to visit Erin at
any time, to see there the scores of tanks, the acres of vast workshops
and store-sheds, the miles of sidings, and the tons upon tons of gear
and equipment, and to reflect that every pound of this material had
come from England since the winter of ’16, was enough to make one pause
and wonder; and looking back now at the whole industry, raised in so
short a time from nothing at all, it appears, with all its obvious
shortcomings, a highly remarkable achievement of forethought and energy.
I have gone a little far ahead. The growth was rapid, but it was not
all accomplished at a blow; and it was the least known and advertised
aspect of the expansion. Side by side with the rise of Erin as a base,
the combatant branch was growing also. The old companies in France had
become battalions, and the latter were multiplying at a rate of one a
month.
About the time when E and F Companies were leaving Thetford for
Bovington, A, B, C, and D were withdrawn from Acheux to Bermicourt.
They were raised at once to their new status, under the same
alphabetical designations, and volunteers were called for from other
arms of the service. Originally each of these new battalions was
to have had 72 tanks; but partly on account of the difficulties of
production, partly for simplicity of tactical handling, this number
was by degrees whittled down to one-half. The eventual establishment
for a battalion was fixed at three companies of 12 tanks each, and a
Workshops Company; making a total of 36 tanks, and some 800 officers
and men, commanded by a Lieutenant-Colonel. Each combatant company
consisted of three fighting sections of 4 tanks, and one spare or
supply section. The Workshops Company, like the others, was commanded
by a Major, and was responsible for the upkeep of the tanks and for
all repairs which could be executed in the field. At a later date
these battalion workshops were abolished and merged into brigade
organisations, Engineer Officers, with a small staff, remaining with
the units. The latter, in theory (and to a large extent in fact), were
now capable of effecting their own minor repairs and maintenance.
There was an Equipment Officer to each battalion, and subsequently
three assistants for the companies. No less important was the
Reconnaissance branch. In addition to the Battalion R.O. (a Captain),
there were three company R.O.’s and three assistants, with a staff
of draughtsmen. In most of the battalions the standard of this
essential work, both in the office and in the field, was very high.
The Tank Corps was responsible for many innovations in this branch of
Intelligence, such as the more general use of layered maps, and of the
study of aeroplane photographs. The Germans, whose map-making, oddly
enough, was usually poor, were led to adopt the device of layering by
examples which they found in captured tanks.
Finally, each battalion started life with an imposing array of every
type of motor transport--light cars, box-cars, lorries, mobile repair
shops, motor-bicycles, &c. But this Utopian equipment was too good to
last. In France the transport was pooled; and over this fatal step, and
the appeals and recriminations evoked by it ever since, it is better
to be silent. General Grant has said that military history should
be truthful; but no good purpose can be served by dwelling on such
tragedies. They are common to the human race--or at any rate to the
human army.
With the nine battalions now in process of formation, four in France
and five at home, it was proposed to make up three brigades. Two
came at once into being: the 1st, consisting of C and D Battalions,
under Colonel C. D. A. Baker-Carr, D.S.O.; and the 2nd, of A and B
Battalions, under Colonel A. Courage, M.C. The 3rd Brigade H.Q.,
Colonel J. Hardress Lloyd, D.S.O., commanding, was formed soon after
to await the new arrivals. As the latter assembled in France the units
would be redistributed until there were three battalions in each
brigade.
Before finishing with the subject of expansion, certain auxiliary
services fall to be mentioned. The Tank Corps had its own signal
branch, including wireless and pigeons. The former was tried in tanks
especially fitted for the purpose, but was not strikingly successful.
Cable-laying machines were also used in the Ypres salient. Pigeons,
until the final advance, when the lofts could not keep up, proved
by far the most rapid and reliable means of communication during an
action. Two birds, when available, were carried in each tank; and
their behaviour in the most trying circumstances imaginable was truly
exemplary. I shall never forget the placid and almost _blasé_ air with
which a couple in my own tank continued to sip their water, and take
apparently an intelligent interest in the proceedings while, in a
sweating atmosphere of petrol fumes, high explosive, and decomposing
humanity, we were crashing over fallen tree-trunks along the
Poelcapelle road.
Supply-tanks were first used at the battle of Messines. These
were old Mark II.’s with their guns removed, and special sponsons
substituted--the equivalents, in fact, of the eighteenth-century
warships armed _en flûte_ and filled with stores. Each tank carried
300 gallons of petrol and 80 of water; track and engine-oil and grease
in proportion; and upwards of 10,000 rounds of S.A.A. and 6-pdr.
shell. This improvisation was found so invaluable, especially in
devastated areas where roads were few, that a little later regular
supply companies were formed, each of three sections, and attached to
brigades, the sections working with battalions. A further development
ensued when the infantry, profiting indirectly by this service, asked
for supply-tanks of their own. A number of gun-carriers, as well as
Mark II.’s, were used for this purpose in the autumn of 1918.
The gun-carriers deserve a word of notice. They were tanks built on the
tractor principle and designed to carry 60-pounder guns across country.
The gun was lifted up bodily, carriage and all, by long arms projecting
from the front of the machine, between the tracks; it was then carried
like a baby to its destination and there lowered to earth again. These
G.C. tanks, although driven by Tank Corps mechanics, came under the
orders of the Garrison Artillery. They were used for the first time
at Ypres on 31st July 1917. But that half-drowned battlefield, which
all but ruined the Tank Corps itself, was the beginning and the end of
the gun-carriers’ legitimate career. On fair ground they might have
proved valuable, but they were never tried again; and after a period of
desuetude they were consigned to the hack-work of supply.
The salvage companies formed yet another branch of the corps, and a
most hard-working and ill-requited one. It was their tedious, and
often perilous, duty to salve all tanks left completely derelict, from
whatever cause, behind our front line. More than once the personnel
were working for days on end under shell-fire, and they suffered a high
percentage of casualties. This was especially the case in the Ypres
salient in the dreadful winter of 1917-18, when there were close on 190
tanks lying rusting in the mud. Some had disappeared almost completely,
and round others coffer-dams had to be built to raise them from the
lagoons in which they lay half-submerged. Yet ninety were salved here
in ten months; and from the battalions, fresh from the fighting in this
God-forsaken area, came volunteers to help in the work! No words can
do justice to the difficulties which the salvers had to overcome in
that morass, or to the labour and ingenuity which overcame them. I can
speak with some authority on these amphibious conditions, for I left my
own tank there with two feet of water already above the floor, and all
the King’s coffer-dams and all the King’s men failed to get her out.
I have no figures to quote as to the numbers salved on later and less
inhuman battlefields, but the total must have run into hundreds. And
this devoted work, unrecognised as it was, had its unexpected reward.
When strikes at home were delaying production, it was the old rescued
tanks lying in scores at Erin that were furbished up and put into
commission again to bring battalions up to strength for Cambrai and the
big battles of August 1918.
II.
While expansion was in progress the lessons of the Somme with regard
to the capabilities of the tanks themselves were considered and put
to good purpose. In November ’16, at a conference of the Mechanical
Warfare Supply Department, Lieut.-Colonel Stern, the chief engineer,
dealt with the programme of future construction. There were then in
France seventy Mark I. tanks. Fifty Mark II.’s were to arrive by
January, and a similar number of Mark III.’s by the following month.
(These last, of course, never materialised.) From February to May
Mark IV.’s were to be produced at the rate of twenty a week; Mark V.’s
would be available in August; and a new light tank, the Medium A or
“Whippet,” by Christmas. We have already dealt with the Mark IV., and
the Mark V. and Whippets can be considered when eventually they did
make an appearance. For this programme was too optimistic: no Mark
IV.’s arrived until after the battle of Arras, and the Mark V. was not
ready in any numbers for another year.
In the spring of 1917, therefore, when the Tank Corps went into battle
for the first time in its new form, the situation was as follows: At
Bovington, Brigadier-General Gore Anley, D.S.O., with Colonel M. B.
Matthew Lannowe as G.S.O.I., superintended the training of the five new
battalions, until in March he went to the Administrative Headquarters
of the Heavy Branch in London, where two months later he was succeeded
by Major-General Sir John Capper, K.C.B., R.E. Brigadier-General W.
Glasgow, C.M.G., took over the command at Bovington. In February
or March the first Mark IV.’s arrived there for training purposes,
followed in April by an experimental Whippet. Meanwhile in France
Colonel Elles and his brigade commanders were organising and training
the new establishment, and the great shops at Erin were growing
appreciably every day. A highly interesting development, launched the
previous autumn from Thetford--namely, the Palestine detachment--was
nearing the day of trial in that inhospitable region, and will be dealt
with in the next chapter.
The general situation in France and Flanders was altered greatly by
the German withdrawal in March. During the winter minor operations had
cleared the enemy out of the positions north of the Ancre which he had
held so tenaciously and so long, and by the beginning of March we were
within 2000 yards of Bapaume on the Albert road. Between Bapaume and
Arras the Germans now occupied a very pronounced salient. A proposal
to drive in its northern flank with the help of two battalions of
tanks was cancelled because it was found impossible to provide the
latter at the time. Before anything further could be done the enemy
forestalled this and other plans of attack by an extensive and very
skilful retreat, reaching at one point a depth of twenty miles. The
pursuing armies, following up from Arras to Soissons, found themselves
confronted by the Hindenburg Line, whose existence was well known but
whose character had been hitherto a matter of conjecture. It is the
custom to depreciate this much-advertised defence system. Colonel
Buchan, allowing his natural hankering after prophecy to outrun his
usual discretion, observed rather rashly (in the beginning of 1918)
that “the marvellous new Siegfried line was not a fortress from which
he (the enemy) could sally, but a prison.” In view of the “sallies”
which followed hard upon this assertion, it would appear, with others
of its kind, to be susceptible of modification. In point of fact, the
Hindenburg Line was neither a fortress nor a prison: it simply was what
it professed to be, an extremely strong entrenched system designed for
an especial purpose which, on the whole, it adequately fulfilled.
Sir Douglas Haig, writing of the intended stroke which was frustrated
in part by the withdrawal of the enemy, says, “My object was to deal
him a blow which would force him to use up reserves.” South of the
Ancre such a blow was now out of the question: the pursuing armies
found themselves faced by this new defensive system, while behind them
there lay the whole devastated area of the Somme to complicate their
lines of supply. Much had to be done before an advance was possible
here. But the northern half of the plan, to drive the enemy farther
back from Arras and from off the Vimy Ridge, remained unaffected; and
it was decided to carry it through. Its main object was still to divert
the mass of German reserves away from the Soissons region, where the
French were to make the principal attack on the southern pivot of the
Hindenburg Line.
The battle of Arras, as it is called, was timed to open at dawn on the
9th April. Three armies were taking part, and Colonel Baker-Carr’s 1st
Tank Brigade was to co-operate with all three. Only 60 tanks, Marks I.
and II., were available, of which 8 were allotted to the 1st Army in
the attack on the Vimy Ridge, 40 to the 3rd Army astride the Scarpe,
and 12 to the 5th Army (which did not come into the battle until the
11th) on the right. As this operation had been long foreseen, the
reconnaissance officers of the 1st Brigade had begun their survey of
the area as early as January. Dumps were formed at Neuville St Vaast,
Roclincourt, Achicourt, and Beaurains. The three groups of tanks were
detrained respectively at Acq, Montenescourt, and Achiet-le-Grand.
These preliminary movements were as trying as they always are: the
trains were forty-eight hours late, the sponson trolleys gave endless
trouble by breaking away or overturning, and much extra work and
anxiety resulted from the loss of 20,000 gallons of petrol in a railway
accident. Some days before the battle, however, all the machines were
lying up in positions close to the front line, some of C Battalion
being concealed in the ditch of the citadel of Arras.
For tank operations the ground north of the Scarpe possessed every
possible disadvantage. No one who has seen the region of the old front
line about Ecurie and Neuville St Vaast in early spring can wonder that
Mark II. tanks, provided only with torpedo-booms for unditching, failed
to get far. The soil is heavy loam above chalk, inclined to be wet in
any season; and as it had been fought over since 1914, it was one great
maze of half-obliterated trenches and craters whose walls crumbled at a
touch. South of Arras conditions were slightly better. The ground was
hardly less cut up, but the surface was firmer. Much depended, however,
upon the weather. The early days of April were fine and clear, and the
soil, except in the marshy valley of the Scarpe, dried rapidly. But
on zero night, with that fatality which seemed to pursue our efforts
for so long, the wind shifted, the sky clouded over, and rain began to
fall. Before long it was snowing.
Zero was at 5.30 A.M. With every big offensive our artillery fire
had increased in intensity; and on this morning, after seven days’
preliminary bombardment, the opening barrage was more tremendous than
anything which had been seen on the Somme. Under its protection the
Canadians and the 12th Corps reached the crest of the Vimy with little
trouble. But the tanks were unable to follow. While the real struggle
was beginning in the rain and sleet around La Folie Farm and Hill
145, the eight tank crews were toiling with their ineffective gear to
extricate their machines from the hopeless ground on the slope below.
Not one of them got into action. To the right, however, in the Scarpe
Valley, the section working with the 6th Corps had done good work; and
south of the river, C Battalion had given another convincing example,
to those who had eyes to see, of the new methods which were subverting
the ancient principles of attack. The night had begun with a serious
disaster. The tanks started from the village of Achicourt. The little
river Crinchon, flowing into the Scarpe, had created patches of bog
which in places had become covered with a crust of what appeared to
be hard soil. The reconnaissance of the route had been perfunctory:
it led straight over one of these concealed traps; and the officer
responsible had not even tested the ground with his stick. The night
was intensely dark, the wind was gusty, and the rain falling heavily;
while in Achicourt, close by, a dump had been blown up, and was still
burning and drawing the enemy’s fire. Amid this uproar and confusion
six tanks drove one after the other into the bog, and were engulfed
beyond all immediate repair. This inexcusable calamity would have
entailed more serious consequences than it did but for the admirable
work of other tanks engaged in the same region. The German position
here was one of great strength. South of the elaborate system of
trenches around Tilloy-les-Mofflaines extended a formidable work,
upwards of half a mile long, known from its shape as the Harp. It
marked the junction of the northern end of the Hindenburg Line with the
old front system, and it rested partly on the height called Telegraph
Hill, also heavily fortified. “The Harp,” to quote Colonel Buchan,
“was such a place as in the early days of the Somme would have baffled
us for a month or more. It was stronger than Contalmaison or Pozières
or Guillemont. It was rushed by a batch of tanks, some of which stuck
fast in its entanglements, while others forced their way through to the
plain beyond. In a very short time there was no Harp, and the garrison
were on their way westward to the cages.” No one acquainted with the
deliberate progress of the Mark II. over bad ground would speak of it
as “rushing” anything; but, fast or slow, these old machines on this
occasion achieved a really notable success on a large scale. While some
had been dealing faithfully with the Harp, others to north and south
had cleared Tilloy and crawled up and over Telegraph Hill; and their
exertions were largely responsible for the capture by the 3rd Army of
the whole German second position south of the Scarpe, including two
miles of the Hindenburg Line, within four hours after zero.
The 5th Army attack was not due to begin until the 11th. But an
attempt, arranged at the last moment, was made the same morning
to break the line opposite Bullecourt with a company of tanks of
D Battalion. It suffered the fate of most enterprises so hastily
planned. A regular blizzard broke soon after dark: the tanks,
although they never lost their way, could not arrive in time; and
the Australians, who had been lying out all night on the railway
embankment south of Bullecourt, were withdrawn before daybreak. Had
the attack materialised, it would have possessed especial interest,
for it was designed on the principles advocated throughout by the
Tank Corps itself and now universally accepted. The tanks, massed on
a narrow front, were to have preceded the infantry with no artillery
preparation and no barrage until they actually reached the German
front line. In other words, a genuine surprise was aimed at. But the
fiasco caused by the snowstorm discouraged the 5th Army Staff. When the
attempt was repeated on the original date, April 11th, they reverted
to the usual methods--with lamentable results. The enemy, already on
the alert by reason of the battle farther north, was warned of the
attack by the barrage coming down at zero before the tanks had crossed
No Man’s Land. Field-guns, pushed far forward for anti-tank defence,
were ready to get on to their mark at once; while the tanks showed up
clearly on the snow the moment the dawn broke. The sections of the
company were scattered on a wide front, and one, in the centre, was
detailed to push through the Hindenburg Line without any infantry
support at all. There were eleven tanks in all, most of which, handled
with extreme gallantry, crossed the dreaded Hindenburg trenches and got
well into the fight. One, with all on board wounded and every round
spent, was hit and disabled on its way back. Another reached the edge
of Bullecourt village, came to a standstill there through gear trouble
which could not be remedied, and after holding out for some time
without seeing any of the infantry who should have been in support, was
only evacuated when the Germans brought a field-gun into the houses
and opened fire. A third, less fortunate, received a shell in the
petrol-tanks on the edge of the enemy’s wire, and went up instantly in
flames, only three of the crew escaping. A fourth was hit twice within
a minute, the first shell coming in through the cab, decapitating the
driver and then bursting inside. In all, nine tanks were known to have
been disabled by shell-fire, although one of them returned later with
a hole in its roof. Of the fate of the remaining two nothing was ever
known with certainty. They disappeared into the blue. Major W. H. L.
Watson, D.C.M., who commanded the company, gives the following account
of their loss: “Our aeroplanes had seen two tanks crawling over the
open country beyond the Hindenburg trenches to Riencourt, followed
by four or five hundred cheering Australians. Through Riencourt
they swept, and on to the large village of Hendecourt, five miles
beyond the trenches. They entered the village, still followed by the
Australians....”[9] No further definite news of them was ever received.
Tanks and infantry alike were swallowed up and lost in the smoke of
the battle. At the end of the day the Germans still held Riencourt;
and Hendecourt, far behind, with all its gallant but unsupported
assailants, was retaken at once. But the feat was a startling one, and
by itself it makes the Australians’ complaint, that they were “let
down” by the tanks, seem, to say the least of it, ungenerous. This
charge, which Colonial troops are but too ready to fling at every one
except themselves, was further confuted by the whole record and losses
of D Battalion in the attack. Almost the whole company got into action:
every one of the eleven tanks was disabled or lost; and 50 per cent
of the personnel were killed, wounded, or missing. The attack was a
costly failure, for while hardly a yard of ground was won, the infantry
casualties totalled several thousand, and an entire company of tanks
was destroyed; but the responsibility rested, not with the latter, but
with whosoever insisted on their employment in a manner continually
condemned by every officer in the Tank Corps itself. No one outside
that corps understood the proper functions of the machines, or had
even taken to heart the lessons of the Somme. The German position at
Bullecourt, protecting as it did the vital junction at Quéant of the
main Hindenburg Line with the Drocourt Switch, was immensely strong.
It had an outer belt of wire 25 feet broad, machine-gun emplacements
of ferro-concrete 125 yards apart along both the main and support
lines, a continuous tunnel, stretching for miles, beneath the latter,
and numerous semi-independent strong-points. The tanks had proved
that even this was no obstacle to them; but if they were used at
all, they should have been used in greater numbers and in mass, with
infantry trained beforehand, and supported by a barrage designed not
to warn, but to aid in surprising, the enemy. Far more just than the
Australians’ complaints was Colonel Elles’s remark after the battle:
“This is the best thing tanks have done yet.”[10]
On the same morning, C Battalion was in action again in front of Arras.
Here the Germans still held the villages of Fampoux and Monchy, with
the Hindenburg trenches south of Telegraph Hill. In the centre of this
position, south-east of Arras, between the Scarpe and the Cambrai
road, there rises a very conspicuous height known to fame as Orange
Hill. It commands a view behind the whole length of the Vimy Ridge,
and, in consequence, overlooked our new battery positions and lines
of approach on that side. On the eastern end of the hill, beyond a
slight dip in the crest, stood the village of Monchy-le-Preux, once a
pleasant cluster of trees and red-tiled roofs, but now, since our heavy
howitzers had been at work on it, no more than a mass of rubble and
splintered stumps. It is a famous village, not only for the fighting
which has centred about it, but also for the remarkable myth which it
perpetuates. The attack launched on the 3rd Army front on April 11th
had Monchy for its main objective; and before telling the true story
of its capture, it is interesting to note how the latter is usually
represented. In Sir Douglas Haig’s despatch the event is described as
follows: “Two English infantry brigades, acting in co-operation with
cavalry, attacked Monchy-le-Preux at 5 A.M., and after hard fighting,
_in which tanks arrived at an opportune moment_, carried the position.”
The italics, of course, are my own. Colonel Buchan, always too faithful
to his brief, goes one better. He does not mention tanks at all. He
does, however, mention the cavalry. “Next day, the 11th,” he says,
“Monchy was carried, with the assistance of a detachment of cavalry,
but not without heavy losses.” Now, in the first place, as thousands of
people know what really happened at Monchy, these repeated references
to the mounted arm almost compel one to paraphrase the plaintiff in
Whistler _v._ Ruskin, and ask, “Why drag in the cavalry?” The skeletons
of General Bulkeley-Johnson’s men and horses still litter Orange
Hill[11] to testify that the tactics of Balaclava, Salisbury Plain,
and Amiens are in no sense suitable to modern warfare. Secondly, this
distortion of the facts has done a grave injustice to a newer and less
socially popular corps. There is a still more pertinent question which
might be asked: “Why leave out the tanks?” For what actually happened
at Monchy-le-Preux, put very briefly, was this.
On the evening of 10th April there were in the neighbourhood of
Feuchy Chapel, on the Cambrai road at the foot of Orange Hill, the
headquarters of one of the infantry brigades due to attack Monchy
next morning, a brigade of cavalry, and six tanks of C Battalion,
who were to lead the assault. Our line then ran beyond the crest of
the hill, within five hundred yards of Monchy itself. Zero had been
fixed for 5 A.M. After dark four tanks (the other two having developed
mechanical trouble) moved forward. One soon became badly ditched; but
the remaining three climbed the slope during the black early hours of
the 11th, and at the advertised time of zero passed through the line
of half-frozen outposts lying in shell-holes across the hill. But no
barrage came down, nor was there any sign of the supporting infantry.
Although no notification whatever had reached the tank commanders
or even their company headquarters, which was close to that of the
infantry brigade at Feuchy Chapel, zero, after being altered twice,
had been postponed finally for two hours! In the meantime dawn was
breaking; and for the tanks to loiter about the snow-covered ground of
No Man’s Land, on the summit of the hill, would have been to invite
destruction. After waiting a short time, the tank commanders therefore
decided to go on alone, trusting to the infantry to overtake them. As
day came, the trio, still entirely unsupported, entered Monchy. They
proceeded methodically to clear the whole village, cruising about the
ruins and driving out before them, after some stiff fighting, all
of the garrison who had not gone to earth in dug-outs or cellars.
Following up the fugitives, the tanks presently emerged through the
last demolished houses on the far side. They were now on the reverse
slope of the hill; and their triumphant crews could see, on the falling
ground along the Scarpe Valley, the enemy’s supports hurrying forward,
and even the smoke of the light trains bringing up his supplies.
In the meantime, however, the dispossessed garrison of Monchy, having
been cursed, exhorted, and reinforced, and realising that no infantry
was following the tanks, began to work back round the outskirts of the
village to north and south. It reoccupied the western edge, collected
odd parties who were cowering in dug-outs, and remanned its abandoned
machine-guns. This manœuvre, besides interposing a considerable force
between the tanks and our still silent lines, helped also to bring
about the great cavalry fiasco. Bulkeley-Johnson’s brigade, which had
lost its commander the day before, was standing by its horses near
Feuchy Chapel, when it was discovered by one of the German aeroplanes
which usually came over about daybreak. The aeroplane dropped a few
coloured lights and departed. Shortly after, shells began to fall
among the horsemen; whereupon, instead of withdrawing to the rear or
flank, they mounted and rode forward up the hill. The returned German
machine-gunners in the enclosures west of Monchy were astonished and
delighted, a little later, to perceive the whole brigade appear on the
summit[12] and trot down upon them in a formation impossible to miss.
The result was a mere massacre. Hundreds of men and horses dropped in a
few minutes; and the remainder, turning about, fled for shelter again
behind the crest.[13]
All this time the three tanks were still isolated in the village.
Discovering that the Germans had got round behind them, they started
back through the ruins to clear the way once more and to look for their
own infantry. It was nearly seven o’clock; _for an hour and a half_,
in broad daylight, they had maintained their lone battle actually
within Monchy-le-Preux, needing only a couple of platoons to take over
what they had won. And now it was too late. At seven, as they reached
the near side of the village again and began to disperse the enemy
gathering there for the second time, our delayed attack opened: the
barrage came down with a crash upon Monchy; and, one after the other,
all three tanks were hit and disabled by our own shells!
It is difficult to write patiently about the manner in which this
affair was wilfully misrepresented. It may literally be true to say
that our infantry carried Monchy “after hard fighting”; for when at
length they advanced, the Germans had reoccupied the place in force,
and the tanks, through our own negligence, were disabled. Yet even
this statement is a mere juggling with words. And as for the operation
reports which misled the compilers of the official despatch at G.H.Q.
into describing the single-handed victory of the tanks as an “arrival”
at “an opportune moment,” and which presumably burked all reference
to the blunders of the staffs concerned, no adequate comment seems
possible. The distortion of the facts may be left to speak for itself.
Circumstances rather similar, although not attended by such unhappy
results, marked a second operation undertaken by C Battalion that
morning. Four tanks started with the infantry at the proper time
from Neuville Vitasse to attack that portion of the Hindenburg Line
which the enemy still held from below Telegraph Hill to the village
of Heninel, on the Cojeul river. Working down the trenches, followed
by bombing parties, the tanks killed many of the enemy, drove the
remainder underground, and helped to secure the front system at a very
moderate cost. Having reached the lateral limit of their objective at
Heninel itself, the four, still together, turned north-east through
the village, and, moving up the north bank of the Cojeul, reached
Wancourt, a larger place about a mile in rear. But the infantry was
unable to follow. The tanks entered Wancourt alone, and carried on
there for a long time, amid intermittent falls of snow, just such a
rambling fight as their fellows had waged a few hours before in Monchy.
They signalled repeatedly to the infantry to come on, but in vain; and
by themselves they could secure no permanent hold on the village. At
length, as their supplies of petrol were running low, they effected
a successful withdrawal. This was in the afternoon, for they were in
action altogether for eight or nine hours. In such execrable weather
the whole performance was most creditable, and deserved better support
than it received.
So far as the British armies were concerned, the battle of Arras might
now have been allowed to die a natural death. With the capture of the
Vimy Ridge, Orange Hill, and the Siegfried Line to the south, our
immediate limited objectives had been secured, and it was plain that
the larger success hoped for was beyond our powers. It had been laid
down, as a condition antecedent to any serious attempt at breaking
through, that not only the Hindenburg or Siegfried Line, but also the
Drocourt-Quéant Switch beyond, should be carried within forty-eight
hours. That period had elapsed, and we had not touched the Switch
except at Bullecourt, which was only an outwork to the junction
at Quéant. The enemy was getting up his reserves and beginning to
counter-attack. But it was necessary to hold these reserves on our
front, to aid the French offensive in Champagne; and in consequence
the battle was continued far beyond the limits necessary to round off
our initial victory. It was continued, in fact, for another month, and
produced some of the most sanguinary fighting of the whole war. The
tanks took part in several actions, notably at the Roeux Chemical Works
on the 23rd, when they received the thanks of the corps and divisional
commanders with whose units they were working. Finally, they went in
again at Bullecourt on 8th May, when the infantry failed to support
them, and they suffered heavy losses to no purpose.
The two battalions were now completely crippled. They had fought in
nearly a dozen separate actions in a month. The losses in experienced
personnel had been severe, and could not easily be replaced. As for
tanks, which mattered less, since Mark II.’s would never again be used
as fighting machines, C Battalion had none left at all, and D only
two or three. The shattered brigade, therefore, was withdrawn to the
Bermicourt area in the middle of May. There it rested and trained,
received reinforcements, drew Mark IV.’s from Erin, and underwent that
reshuffling of battalions which preceded its next appearance in the
field in the Ypres Salient.
III.
The Arras battles marked a great step forward in the history of the
Tanks Corps. Not only had it placed a brigade of two battalions in
the field, but its own tactical ideas had begun insensibly to leaven
the old-established theories of attack. The capture of the Harp, the
wasted heroism at Hendecourt and Monchy, even the first Bullecourt
fiasco on 10th April--all pointed the same way. It had been shown,
more by local accidents than by design, that the classical methods
of artillery preparation could be replaced by a more effective
substitute; and, conversely, that the long preliminary bombardment was
highly prejudicial to the use of tanks. It was proved once more that
trenches, unless of exceptional width, were no obstacle at all. Another
lesson to be drawn was the necessity of devising a more effective
unditching gear for use in badly broken or boggy ground. The old
moral of co-operation with other arms was rubbed in again and again.
The senseless complaint that the tanks “let down” the infantry would
never have been uttered if the latter had taken the obvious course of
trying to learn something about the former’s difficulties and methods,
and had grasped the fact that they never were intended for use in
such conditions as the guns and weather between them had produced on
the Arras front as well as on the Somme. This point was the more
important because a gratifying feature of the operations had been the
small percentage of mechanical breakdowns--a proof that officers and
men were profiting rapidly by experience.
By the loss of the two tanks at Hendecourt--the first which the enemy
had captured--a great fault in the Marks I. and II. was disclosed to
him. This was the penetration of the armour by his “K” bullets. Many
casualties had been incurred in this way: in the attack on the Roeux
Chemical Works on 23rd May, five tanks out of eleven had the majority
of their crews disabled by armour-piercing bullet wounds. The Germans
now ordered every infantryman to carry a clip of this ammunition,
while several hundreds of rounds were issued to each machine-gun team.
But happily this discovery came too late to do any harm. The next
tank action was fought by Mark IV.’s, whose improved armour was proof
against the “K” bullets, which at very short range only splintered its
inner facings.