YPRES: THE 31ST JULY.
I.
All spare officers and crews had taken part in the reconnaissance of
the Salient, for they might be called upon at any moment. And, as it
happened, one of the original tank commanders in my section fell ill
about the middle of July, whereupon I stepped into the vacancy.
His tank was also _hors de combat_ with a broken-down engine. It being
impossible to repair it in the time available a new machine, with two
or three others required by the brigade, was on its way from Erin to
replace it, and this I was to take over on its arrival. The night it
detrained, therefore, I accompanied Kessel, my section commander, to
the Oosthoek ramp. The event was marked by one startling occurrence.
Earlier in the evening the Germans had been industriously shelling the
far end of the wood with shrapnel; but everything was quiet when the
tank train pulled in soon after ten o’clock. It was a very dark night.
Before eleven, however, my new tank was parked up and camouflaged in
the wood to the north of the military road. The rest of the company’s
tanks were a quarter of a mile away, on the south side. Lorries had
come up to take the men back to Lovie Château, and we were standing by
them, waiting for a few laggards, when a very large ammunition dump
near Hospital Farm, half a mile to the northward, was hit and exploded.
It was, I suppose, one of the biggest dumps in the Salient--a
towering accumulation of every size and type of shell, together with
thousands of cases of S.A.A., rockets, grenades, Very lights, and
other inflammatory stuff--and even from where we stood the effect of
its destruction was prodigious and alarming. A great red glare blazed
up suddenly above the trees, broadened, and grew higher; volumes of
blood-shot smoke, streaked with rockets, covered half the sky; and
presently, through the pop-pop-pop of exploding rifle ammunition and
the louder detonations of shells, we could hear the crackle of burning
timber as the neighbouring trees themselves caught fire. In this lay
a serious menace to the tanks, for the wood, although straggling,
was continuous. It was not long before we could see the distant
flames through the trees in front of us. In the meantime, preceded
by magnificent eruptions of fire and sparks, there had burst two
terrific explosions, whose concussions shook the ground, hit us like
blows, and flung fragments of white-hot metal on to the military road.
Happily, what little wind there was blew away from us, and the fire
made no appreciable gain in our direction; and after standing by until
midnight, prepared to drive the tanks out of the wood if necessary, we
decided that we might go home. It was surprising that the Germans (so
far at least as one could judge amid the prevailing uproar) refrained
from stimulating things in general by a little judicious shelling. The
glare of the great conflagration, which lit up the whole Salient, must
have been visible from Courtrai. It was still blazing and exploding
as we left; and two hours later, at Lovie Château, four miles away, I
heard another series of crashing detonations.
The following morning I marched my crew down to the new tank. I decided
naturally to take with me my own men, with whom by now I was well
acquainted, in preference to the strange drivers and gunners whose
officer I had replaced. The latter, I think, were as disappointed as my
own crew was pleased by this translation; for throughout the battalion
the spirit in the ranks was admirable. Most of the N.C.O.’s and a large
proportion of the men came from the original F Company of the Heavy
Branch, and very few of them (in my crew, for example, none at all)
had ever seen a shell burst until they came to the Salient; and while
it is true that soldiers often look forward to their first battle with
a confidence born simply of ignorance, and deteriorate in _moral_ as
their experience of horrors increases, the personnel of the Tank Corps
maintained to the end a conspicuously high standard. And to go into
action in a tank, as I hope to show, is not the bed of roses some rash
people used to think it. I put this consistent excellence down in part
to the class of man which the corps attracted.
There was plenty of work to be done when I took over G 46, whose more
intimate name--transferred from her disabled predecessor, and none of
my choosing--was “Gina.” (The tanks and each battalion were christened
with names beginning with the initial letter of their unit. Thus we
were all “G’s.” “Gina,” appropriately enough, was a female; but in
fact it seems natural to speak of all tanks as feminine, as if they
were ships.) I have said already that no movement was permitted in
Oosthoek Wood, and that in consequence it was impossible to test the
transmission of my new command. Engines could be run quietly, however;
and my first driver, a boy named Johnstone from the Armstrong College
at Newcastle, who was one of those fortunate beings with a _flair_ for
anything mechanical, tinkered away affectionately at the magneto and
other parts until the engine of G 46 ran like a dream. Throughout her
short military career it gave no trouble of any kind until the water
on the Pilkem Ridge got into the clutch and put the whole thing out of
action at once and for ever.
Most of the novelties in the Mark IV. have been described already; but
I have omitted so far any account of the new unditching gear tested by
us for the first time at Wailly, and now to be used with a vengeance
in the Salient. In place of the two short torpedo spars, each tank
was now fitted with a single squared boom, about twelve feet long
and strengthened with steel. It was a most heart-breaking affair to
man-handle, for it weighed nine hundredweight; but for its particular
work it was highly efficient. A pair of longitudinal rails lifted it
clear of all obstructions on the roof, and when not in use it lay at
right angles across these just above the spud-box fitted on the stern
of the tank, its ends projecting a couple of feet on each side of the
latter. Originally, the boom was lashed in place; but afterwards clips
were provided to secure it to the rails. When required for unditching,
it was attached to the track-plates on either side in the same manner
as the old spars, by a pair of chains and clamps. This attachment
could be effected by a couple of men standing behind the tank, usually
the most sheltered spot. On its completion the heavy boom was carried
forward along the rails as the tracks revolved, slid down on to them
in front of the cab, and was then pulled under the tank, where its
great length and stiff resistance transversely to the direction of
the latter’s movement enabled the machine to climb out of almost any
position. This boom was tested first in the sodden area of Messines,
after that battle; and it was in use with all heavy tanks to the end
of the war. Its only disadvantage--an inevitable one--was its weight.
Added to that of thirty or forty iron spuds or shoes, it completed an
extra load of a couple of tons; and on occasions when the heavier Mark
IV. males became badly ditched it was found that the engine was not
powerful enough to overcome this handicap. I have seen a boom on a tank
lying at a rather acute angle refuse to move at all. But for all normal
cases of ditching it was invaluable.
In those days tank equipment was devised and issued on a lavish scale.
One took over with the machine a vast assortment of instruments
calculated to soften the asperities of a very cramped and uncomfortable
mode of warfare, and calling to mind the fittings of H.M.S.
_Mantelpiece_. If we had no zoetropes, excellent carriage clocks,
mounted in heavy brass, were the perquisites in more senses than one
of every tank commander. The number of these clocks destroyed by
shell-fire was so abnormal in the Salient that after that deplorable
campaign the issue was stopped, it being felt that the residue of
timepieces in stock would serve a more useful purpose and lead a safer
life in the numerous offices of Central Stores and Workshops at Erin. A
haversack full of splints, shell-dressings, iodine, and other sinister
medical comforts, quite passable binoculars, electric hand-lamps,
signalling shutters, six periscopes, and an ingenious device like a
pair of pantomime braces fitted with batteries, switches, and red and
green lights, to be used in guiding tanks at night, were also among
the treasures thrust upon us in a very open-handed manner. But this
halcyon age did not endure for long. Vulgar considerations of waste
and expenditure supervened. Before the end the whereabouts of every
spanner and split-pin became a cause of acute worry to us all. It
should be unnecessary to add that this era of suspicion brought with
it a veritable spate of new Army Forms--T.K. 5’s and T.Q. 17’s and so
on--continually superseding each other and never by any chance filled
in correctly. We were already in possession of immense log-books,
atrocities known as battle history sheets, and pigeon-message forms.
A fully-equipped tank, in short, was a combination of a battleship,
an ironmonger’s shop, an optician’s, a chemist’s, a grocer’s, and a
Government office. We only wanted a typewriter to round off the outfit.
[Illustration: _Third Battle of Ypres, Aug.-Nov. 1917._]
I do not remember the exact date on which I took over G 46 and her
belongings; but it must have been between the 15th and 20th of July.
The battle, fixed originally for the 25th, had already been put back
three days. The final postponement, to the 31st, was made known only
at the last moment. In these circumstances there was not too much time
for all that had to be done. The whole tank required to be washed
down and scrubbed, for she came straight from the workshops in a
filthy condition. The six Lewis guns had to be cleaned, and the 276
drums filled with ammunition. Track-plates, spuds, camouflage nets,
petrol, oil, and grease had to be procured from the advanced stores
and dump beside the ramp. At the same time further reconnaissance
was carried out, and we all went to see the large-scale model of our
sector of the attack which the 18th Corps had built out of sand and
brick-rubble in the centre of the wood. I cannot honestly say that this
ingenious curiosity was of much help to us. Here, however, some sort
of liaison was effected with the infantry with whom we were to work.
Meanwhile, back in camp at Lovie Château there were conferences with
Reconnaissance officers and discussions with company commanders after
dinner. Aeroplane photographs were studied, and special tank charts
composed. (Every tank commander, so far as was possible, made his own
chart on a scale of ¹⁄₅₀₀₀.) Then there was the question of supply to
be considered. All crews took into action two days’ ordinary rations
in addition to the emergency ration; but this food was supplemented
by a few delicacies considered suitable to the festive occasion. Thus
most of us carried also oranges, lemons, chocolates, and biscuits, one
water-bottle filled with rum, and a bottle of whisky. Personally, I
took two bottles of whisky, and was extremely thankful that I did.
Turning to the operations themselves, the 18th Corps was attacking
on a front of two divisions: the 51st Division on the left and the
39th on the right. The two companies of G Battalion were allotted as
follows: 19 Company, with my own section--No. 10--of 21 Company (16
tanks in all) was to advance in two waves with the 39th Division. The
two remaining sections of 21 Company (8 tanks) worked in a single wave
with the 51st Division. The task of these troops was to carry the
German first and second systems on the Pilkem Ridge and then secure
the crossings of the Steenbeek. The positions of these crossings,
at or near St Julien on the 39th Divisional front, determined the
distribution of the tanks, it being the business of the second wave on
the right to endeavour to get over the stream and help the infantry of
the 118th Brigade to consolidate on the far side. My section, in the
first wave, received the following orders:--
“After crossing the German front line, No. 10 Section will
split up. The left-hand pair, G 45 and G 46, pass to the north
of Kultur Farm and take the northern end of Kitchener’s Wood,
giving special attention to Boche Castle and strong-point;
then proceed round the wood and mop up in conjunction with
the infantry until the barrage at line S lifts at zero plus
4.1, when they will advance with the infantry, giving special
attention to Regina Cross. The right-hand pair, G 47 and G 48,
passing to the south of Kultur Farm, will take the southern
end of Kitchener’s Wood, and on the lifting of the barrage on
line S at zero plus 4.1, will devote their attention to the
strong-point at Alberta, and push forward at the discretion of
the commander towards Hugel Hollow.
“As soon as the infantry are consolidated on the Steenbeek
Line, tanks will rally at C 11 d 20.90 (north of Alberta).”
I despair of making any one unfamiliar with the Salient understand
what lay behind these clear and apparently simple instructions. Some
of the difficulties before us will be described in the context. I will
remark here, however, that every tank had to cross the enemy’s front
line by a single narrow gap between two flooded areas which marked the
sites of Hampshire and Canadian Farms--themselves utterly demolished.
We were warned that this front system was likely to become a serious
obstacle. Lying in a hollow, always wet, it was to be subjected to a
terrific barrage, which would destroy it completely, break down the
revetments and all such firm surfaces as parapets and parados provided,
and, in short, reduce the whole line to a grisly conglomeration of
mounds of mud and pools of water. And once across, things would become
even worse. For sixteen days before the attack the whole Pilkem
Ridge was blasted by heavy-calibre shells. The amount of artillery
we had concentrated in the Salient was unprecedented. Three thousand
guns, I believe, were in position on that restricted front. Round
about Brielen, Vlamertinghe, and the château called Les Trois Tours,
batteries of 6-inch, 8-inch, 9.2-inch howitzers, and 60-pounder guns
lined every hedge: down both sides of one narrow track that I remember
one passed them every few yards; and when the preliminary bombardment
was at its height it was sheer torture to be in the neighbourhood. As a
result, everywhere behind the German line the water was welling up and
spreading until the whole surface was a mere crust that would dissolve
at a touch. The final barrage at zero, which as usual was to fall at
dawn, would finish the work. The enemy’s second line, along the crest,
was to be deluged with 9.2’s; while 15-inch railway guns had been
shelling for some days the strong-point at Boche Castle, for which my
own tank was to make. Imagine a country like the Lincolnshire flats, or
the valley of the Kentish Stour, or any other piece of reclaimed and
water-logged land in England, subjected, at the end of three years’
systematic annihilation by high explosives, to this three weeks’ wild
crescendo of destruction, and some idea may be gathered of what the
area behind the hostile front had become even before the downpour on
the 31st, and after added the ultimate touches of disintegration and
horror and misery.
[Illustration: Kitchener’s Wood and German Second Line. Photo taken
July 3, 1917, showing position of Tanks G 45 and 46.]
The probable conditions awaiting us were known to all; but none of
our conjectures equalled the reality. Before the battle we were
more concerned over what proved in the event a comparatively minor
evil--the difficulty we should experience in finding our way to our
various objectives. The view from inside a tank, as one cannot repeat
too often, is restricted and misleading. Once we had crossed our
front line, the few miserable tree-clumps which we had studied from a
distance might appear very different near at hand. They might have been
destroyed, or we might fail to see them at all. The one unmistakable
landmark, Kitchener’s Wood--a plantation, still in fair condition, some
700 yards in length--was actually out of sight until we had climbed out
of some dead ground at the foot of the ridge; and with the dust and
smoke of the battle the first hour after dawn was certain to be dark
and confusing. As our compasses were thoroughly unreliable, there was
a danger of losing direction at the very start. A few tanks, indeed,
quite excusably did so. And throughout the day, all over a battlefield
whose utter bewildering sameness no words can express, there was much
groping and guessing and general uncertainty. One of G Battalion’s
tanks wandered right across two corps’ fronts. But on the whole our
lengthy and sedulous coaching was very triumphantly vindicated: routes
were maintained and objectives reached with surprising accuracy and
punctuality. Delays in most cases were due to the appalling state of
the ground, some tanks having to be unditched two or three times before
they got into action at all.
II.
If the belief still lingers that the British soldier, keen and willing
as he is, always goes into battle (as the Ollivier Cabinet once went
to war) with a light heart, it must be due to too much reading, in
trashy books and journals, of the productions of half-educated persons
with a bias against truth. For very few men, of whatever race, can
even approach the front line in these scientific days with any real
equanimity of spirit. The processes by which one can be hurt are too
many and various, and impend too nearly to permit of it. No healthy
being likes the idea of being killed or mutilated. A common sense of
subordination and comradeship, the fear of being thought afraid, and
the power of habit, take one further than all the high-flown cant about
glory and the joy of battle. And indeed if we all went into battle
with a light heart there would be no merit in the thing: such tokens
as medals and ribbons would lose what small significance they still
possess; and we should be more (or less) than human.
It is during the days immediately before a long-expected action
that men show in their several ways that they are, on the contrary,
very human indeed. The strain which perhaps for weeks has been
there is suddenly increased. Nerves begin to wear, tempers to rise,
uncomfortable moods to supervene. Only the very young and inexperienced
sometimes are superior to this failing. I know that most of us in the
camp by Lovie Château grew rather irritable and contentious toward
the end of our period of waiting. The depressing influence which
seemed always to brood over the Salient, and the feeling that we were
embarking upon a novel and gigantic gamble, were enough to account
for it. The weather had been uncertain, and about the 24th rain
fell heavily. The camp, pitched in a wood amid choking undergrowth,
became steamily moist, smelly, and unhealthy. Every two or three
hours during every night the enemy’s aeroplanes came over and bombed
the neighbourhood thoroughly. There was the usual futile racket
and excitement, with searchlights wavering, shrapnel sparkling and
descending on our heads, and tracer bullets soaring up in streams in
every direction but the right one. This became so much a habit that we
grew accustomed to it; and we used to lie in bed amid the uproar and
wonder sleepily if it were better to put our steel helmets over our
faces or our stomachs. The tank park in Oosthoek Wood suffered from the
same persecution, to which there seemed to be no adequate reply. So
far as I remember, we were lucky enough to escape casualties from this
cause; but other people were not so fortunate. I recall one ghastly
incident of this period, because my crew was on guard fifty yards away
when it happened, and might well have been involved in the disaster.
A battalion of Northumberland Fusiliers, coming out of the line one
evening, bivouacked beside the military road close to our tanks.
They had réveillé at three o’clock in the morning, preparatory to
marching off to rest billets, and at that dangerous hour very foolishly
lit candles and waved lanterns about in the wood. The usual German
aeroplane was at hand. It dropped two heavy bombs very neatly into the
bivouac, and in an instant killed or wounded over a hundred men.
The effect of these powerful bombs, provided with light fuses which
detonated at a touch, was terrible; and it would be thought that any
one who once had seen the victims of a raid would be circumspect for
ever after. Yet troops, even after considerable experience, were often
extraordinarily stupid in this matter of hostile aircraft. Another
north-country battalion--Tynesiders, I believe--was in camp near
Elverdinghe about this time. Two or three German aeroplanes flew low
over the camp in broad daylight. Instead of keeping out of sight, the
whole battalion rushed out to see the raiders. The latter might have
overlooked the camouflaged tents and huts, but the sudden appearance
of a mass of white upturned faces caught their attention at once, with
the inevitable result. A few bombs were released, and the crowd of
spectators became a shambles. The Tynesiders lost 140 men in as many
seconds.
Toward the end of July the shelling of Oosthoek and other likely
places also increased in volume. The enemy was perfectly aware of the
imminence of the attack, and also, as it appeared, of the original date
and the first postponement; and the back areas suffered in consequence.
The red dust floated over Ypres all day. Poperinghe received increased
attention, and was bombed heavily into the bargain. The canal became
more than ordinarily unpleasant. But the German artillerists, in
addition to persecuting these obvious targets, had a system of
plastering with shells certain empty areas which appeared to offer no
attractions to a gunner. This wasteful method gathered in no doubt
a few stray victims, but at a disproportionate cost in ammunition.
The forward region, about Frascati and La Brique, was perhaps more
naturally a favourite one for this blind “area” shooting, for field
batteries were hidden among the willows; and the enemy’s increasing
suspicion of this neighbourhood caused us a good deal of annoyance
during our final journeys on reconnaissance. I remember how Kessel,
Merchant, and I, having been up the line one morning, were sitting
under a hedge near Frascati, eating bully sandwiches and discussing
(of all things) the fourth dimension, when we found ourselves the
unworthy centre of one of these displays of hate. To us it seemed
purposeless and uncalled for to a degree. There was no working party
in the neighbourhood; no one, indeed, was in sight anywhere, and the
batteries, some distance away, were not firing. But high-velocity
shells arrived in streams, and when we were back, very thankfully, at
the canal, the dust-clouds were still rising busily in the desert waste
between us and the farm.
During these last days our preparations in Oosthoek Wood were
completed. The fighting tanks were ready for action. The
supply-tanks--two per company--were filled up with petrol, oil, and
ammunition; limbered waggons drawn by mules were attached to us to work
between Frascati and the base, and we had also one wireless and one
cable-laying tank. Oranges, chocolates, and whisky had been collected.
We had received barrage maps and time-tables, and had visited the
headquarters of the various infantry units with whom we were to work.
Merchant and myself, with G 45 and G 46, were co-operating with a
battalion of the Rifle Brigade. This had moved up to a bivouac on the
edge of Oosthoek, and I walked over one morning to discuss the attack
with the Colonel and his officers. They were very anxious about some
alleged wire in front of the Steenbeek, which I undertook to crush for
them if I ever got so far. In the event I got nowhere near it, and I
was of little or no use to these infantry. I am afraid that not many
of the officers I met that morning were left after the battle, for the
117th Brigade, to which the battalion belonged, suffered cruelly on the
31st.
III.
During the night of the 24th-25th July the tanks of 21 Company (less
No. 10 Section) moved from Oosthoek Wood to Halfway House. On the
24th I had been working late with my men on G 46, making the final
preparations for our own departure the following evening, and as we
left the wood about seven o’clock we met the eight crews marching in
to their tanks. Their move was attended by one disaster. The night
was exceedingly dark, rain had been falling, and the surface of the
narrow winding track which I have described as leading through the
wood to Hospital Farm had become greasy and treacherous. A male tank,
swinging too far to avoid a tree, slid off the cambered road into the
wide moat which surrounded the farm. The water rose a foot above the
floor boards, instantly putting the engine out of action. As nothing
could be done that night, the tank (whose roof was barely level with
the road) was camouflaged and left, the crew bivouacking close at hand.
The remainder pushed on, and after being harassed by some shelling
which fortunately did no harm, parked up under the bushes at Halfway
House. Owing to the postponement of the attack for another three days,
the sunken tank, having been towed ashore the next night with infinite
difficulty, was got running again in time to rejoin the company before
the latter moved on to Frascati.
About five o’clock on the afternoon of the 25th I was having tea with
Kessel, Merchant, and some others under the lee of a tank. We were due
to start our own move at nine that evening. Having already consumed
our own tea ration, we were drinking an extraordinary mud-coloured
beverage infused from one of those compressed concoctions, strongly
resembling tobacco, which friends and relations used to send out as
being especially suitable for active service. Possibly the sinister
influence of this drug was accountable in part for the fact that none
of us were looking forward to the forthcoming approach-march with
the proper military enthusiasm. It was true that the day was humid
and depressing; that the wood was squelchy underfoot and smelt like
a badly-kept mausoleum hurriedly washed in petrol; and that some of
21 Company, having returned in lorries from Halfway House for a few
hours’ rest at Lovie, had brought discouraging reports of the route
and the general conditions nearer to the line. Brisk shelling was in
progress. The tanks of another battalion, uncomfortably embedded among
heavy howitzers under the trees of Les Trois Tours, had come in for the
enemy’s counter-battery work and had passed an extremely unpleasant
night. I will not speak for the rest of us, but I know that I, for one,
was greatly relieved when our tea was interrupted by the arrival of a
runner with the order cancelling our move. Owing to the effects of the
rain, the attack had been put off once more until the last day of the
month. In the long-run it is obvious wisdom to get thankless duties
over and done with as soon as possible; and the Army’s inveterate habit
of issuing eleventh-hour instructions is better indulged in advancing
than in postponing battles; but at the time one does not always reason
so philosophically. Also one feels a little more like the gay and
careless warrior of the newspapers at certain junctures than at others.
Somehow we had not felt either gay or careless that afternoon. And now
we could go back to bed like Christians or reprieved criminals, and
spend a further three days of grace revising once more our testamentary
dispositions (if any) in comparative safety and comfort.
A thoughtful act on the part of the Intelligence Branch marked this
interval and helped to amuse us. I have spoken already of the sketches
of church towers and other remote landmarks with which we had been
provided. There was now issued to each tank commander, with every
circumstance of urgency, a minute drawing about the size of a blue
Mauritius postage-stamp, depicting the tower and spire of Hooglede
Church. No one knew where Hooglede was, or had ever heard of it. It was
generally believed to be near Brussels. Research on the map eventually
discovered it to be a village north-west of Roullers, some nine miles
beyond our farthest objective for the first day. As a sign of optimism
in high quarters this valedictory gift was appreciated; but, being
under no delusions ourselves as to the difficulties before us, we felt
that there was small hope of our visiting the place in the immediate
future. In the event, of course, after three months’ hard fighting the
British Army was still six miles away from Hooglede, and did not reach
it for another year.
Yet, curiously enough, as it happened, there seemed for a few hours a
possibility of Hooglede and many other distant villages coming quickly
into the scheme of things. For one effect of the last postponement
of our attack was to mislead the enemy to a certain extent. Still
anticipating it on the 28th, he withdrew his troops the night before
from 3000 yards of his front line on the canal opposite Boesinghe.
The Guards and French immediately crossed the canal, occupied the
abandoned trenches, and during the night constructed seventeen bridges.
Subsequent attempts to eject them were repulsed. This affair started
a fine crop of rumours about a more pronounced retreat along the
whole front. But the Germans had no intention whatever of retreating.
The evacuation of the canal trenches either was a blunder or had
been designed as a trap, and evidently was regretted. Our movements,
therefore, were carried out as arranged; and on the evening of the
28th, about dusk, the tanks of 19 Company and my own section began
their approach-march to Halfway House.
No one ever troubles to inquire how tanks are brought up to a
battlefield. They are there, miraculously, at zero, and that is
enough. Approach-marches are usually described in a few words, and
their details taken for granted. Yet they can be, and often are, the
most exhausting and nerve-racking feature of tank operations. They
have to be undertaken at night. Lights must be shown very sparingly,
if at all, even inside the tanks. The glow of a cigarette, or a white
handkerchief or map, are often all that an officer can use to direct
his driver. The early stages of a march are made commonly over roads
and tracks, both for help in guidance and to avoid leaving spoors which
hostile aeroplanes could observe or photograph; and the breakdown of
one machine on a bridge or in some street or defile may hold up all
the others behind it, to say nothing of any traffic on the route.
Notwithstanding the greatest care in constructing time-tables, no trek
is complete that does not involve meeting and consequent trouble with
transport. Light railways, timber-tracks, bridges, ground-lines,
pipe-lines, air-lines--all these must suffer, in spite of precautions.
The rate of progress will be maddeningly slow. Although even a Mark IV.
could move at a fair speed under normal conditions, it is impossible
to maintain anything like this when moving a dozen or two by night
into battle. There will be frequent halts to let those behind close
up. It is almost certain that somebody will become ditched, or break
a fan-belt, or get on fire, or fall into trouble of some kind. Such
accidents, trifling in a peaceful daylight trek, become agonising amid
the circumstances of an approach-march by night, when repairs have
to be effected in the dark, and when prolonged delay may be fatal.
In many cases all ranks will have been working most of the preceding
day. They will be up all night. Probably they will work again during
part of the next day, and will be moving once more throughout a second
night. They are lucky if they can obtain any genuine rest during the
few hours allotted for that purpose. Those hours are sure to be spent
in the forward battery area, liable to be shelled or gassed at any
time, and always intolerably noisy. And as the tanks approach the front
line there is an increasing likelihood of their coming under shell-fire
which they can neither dodge nor counter. An infantry column so caught
can at least scatter or take cover; but the tank crews remain boxed
up in their crawling machines, committed to a definite route which
may lead into the heart of the trouble, seeing and hearing little or
nothing, but imagining much, and with none of the stimulants of action
to sustain them. Probably their officers are compelled still to walk
outside as guides. Add finally to all this the inevitable strain and
anxiety involved in the general situation; the actual physical labour
attending all work connected with tanks; the extreme heat endured for
hours by the crews; and it will be apparent that the latter are not
exactly fresh when the time comes to go into action.
Justice has never been done to this side of tank warfare, or to
the Corps’ achievements in respect of it. Before every one of the
hundred actions in which tanks have taken part, some such ordeal as
I have described, with variations for better or worse according to
circumstances, has been undergone. Excluding the very early days,
when everything was against the new unit, the occasions on which the
great majority of every section or company detailed (often at the
last moment) for action did not arrive at the front line in time were
extremely rare. Far more often than not every machine arrived in time.
The climax of this efficiency was reached in the last battle before
Amiens, on the 8th August 1918, when out of 435 tanks collected hastily
from all over France, 430 started in front of the infantry at zero.
But even the infantry never fully appreciated, because they were never
made to understand, the amount of sheer labour and persistence put
forth on their behalf. They called for tanks from somewhere at three or
four hours’ notice--and the tanks came. And that, after all, was what
chiefly mattered.
Our trek to Halfway House was accomplished with only one serious
hitch. On account of the accident to the tank at Hospital Farm, we
were to avoid that place by taking a parallel track through the wood
which increased slightly the length of the route. My section was to
lead. About an hour before we started something went wrong with the
differential of Merchant’s tank, and he did not leave with the rest.
When, about nine o’clock in the evening, the other two tanks of No. 10
pulled out from the trees south of the military road and swung on to
the timbered thoroughfare, G 46 was waiting on the north side to fall
in behind. 19 Company followed after me. Spectators from the infantry
bivouacs now springing up again in the wood lined the roadside to watch
the long line of tanks moving off in the dusk, but all wheeled traffic
had been stopped or diverted for an hour. Before that period was up
all the fifteen tanks had left the road, and were proceeding northward
along the lane under the trees. The night was misty but clear, and
lighted brilliantly with stars; but there was no moon, and in the wood
it was very dark. To guide my driver as I walked in front of G 46, I
had a half-folded map thrust under the belt and cross-strap on my back.
It must have been nearly midnight when I cleared the wood at the point
called Dirty Bucket Corner, and swung to the right along a road leading
eventually to Vlamertinghe. In the open one could see very clearly. The
leading tank (M’Elroy’s) of 19 Company should have been close behind
me, but there was no sign of it or any other. Entirely unknown to me,
a singular accident had happened. A few hundred yards farther back in
the wood we had crossed a broad-gauge military railroad. As M’Elroy’s
machine was actually astride the metals a light engine came down them
at a fair speed, struck the tank broadside on, pushed it into a hedge,
and was itself derailed. The tank was uninjured, except for a bent
plate on the sponson, but several of the crew were cut about, and
all were badly shaken. M’Elroy himself, being outside, was unhurt. A
considerable delay ensued, the light engine having to be towed out of
the way, or back on to the line; and the tank was left by the roadside
while a spare crew was sent for. In the meantime, knowing nothing of
all this, No. 10 Section had carried on. It was not for another hour
that 19 Company overtook me again. We had then left the Vlamertinghe
road, and were on Rum Road itself, nearing our destination. The
clutch on G 46, for reasons already explained, had not been tested,
and was slipping badly; and I had to halt for ten minutes or so while
it was adjusted, thus letting several of the following tanks pass
me. This was our last delay. Alden and Brassington, in front of me,
already were parking up their tanks at Halfway House, where the rest
of 21 Company’s machines had been lying for three days; and here I
soon joined them. Everything was quiet in the neighbourhood, except
for the eternal uproar of our own artillery; but we learnt from the
guard that Les Trois Tours, whose trees we could see dimly, had been
shelled again that evening. It was at this juncture that we were
astonished by the arrival of Merchant’s tank, which we had left in
Oosthoek Wood with its differential casing removed. The repairs had
been effected very rapidly, and the tank had then covered the whole
route on fourth speed, actually overtaking us in little more than an
hour. The enclosure at Halfway House was rectangular, and to enter
it we had to cross a wide ditch, choked with ferocious brambles, and
break through a towering hedge. My section was to lie up under some
long neglected fruit trees and another hedge on the far side; and a
good deal of manœuvring--infuriating work in the dark with the Mark IV.
secondary gears--was required before we were satisfactorily hidden.
Camouflage nets had then to be strung up to the trees, pegged down, and
supplemented by foliage. All ranks, as fast as their tanks were secured
for the night, helped to efface our tracks through the hedge and across
the enclosure. The work was finished about 2 A.M., and, leaving two
men per crew and one officer per section with the tanks, the rest of
us trailed thankfully back to the beginning of Rum Road, where lorries
were waiting to carry us to Lovie for a final rest in camp. Such
arrangements for one’s comfort, it may be noted, were peculiar in my
experience to this operation alone. They were made possible by the
length of the route, and could be applied only to this short initial
stage. Usually they are out of the question.
The ensuing evening, that of the 29th, we returned by lorry to Halfway
House at dusk. The dangerous part of the journey, including the
crossing of the canal, had now to be accomplished. Rain had fallen
again, the sky was clouded, and the night promised to be a black
one. It was indeed already very dark when 21 Company pulled out of
the enclosure. A section of 19 Company followed, and then my own. My
exasperating clutch, although it had been tightened up during the
day, proved to be still refractory. I was obliged to halt again after
a while to make a further adjustment; and as the operation was not
a lengthy one, I asked the tank commander behind me (Lynch, who was
killed thirty-six hours later) to wait, as I wished to maintain my
position in the column. We were off again, in fact, very shortly after.
But at this stage every one was becoming anxious and irritable, and
the stoppage brought exalted personages raving about G 46, clamouring
for it to proceed. As it happened, haste would have helped nobody,
for about this time serious disaster overtook the section in front.
Our route left Rum Road a quarter of a mile from the canal, and took
thence a narrow track leading direct to Marengo Causeway. This track
was bounded by a dense hedge, with trees, on one hand, and by a deep
ditch on the other: its surface was greasy after the rain, and the two
leading tanks of 19 Company slid off into the ditch. They still blocked
the track, and until they were got out no one could advance. I soon
caught up this paralysed advance-guard, where crews were labouring
with booms and shovels, and officers were peering at their watches
and whispering anxiously. Henriques, the Reconnaissance Officer of
19 Company, came to me muttering that “things were very serious.” As
indeed they were, for the nights at the end of July are short: it was
already nearly one o’clock; and it was essential for us all to reach
the shelter of the trees at Frascati before morning. If dawn found any
tanks in the open east of the canal, all sorts of calamities would
have ensued. The whole offensive would have been jeopardised, as our
presence so far forward must have advertised its immediate onfall to
the enemy, to say nothing of the consequences to ourselves. Added
to these apprehensions for the morrow, there fell the present fear
that at any moment the Germans might begin to shell the canal and
its approaches. Their gunners had been very quiet so far that night;
but if they chose to indulge in their favourite pastime while our
fifteen tanks were held up in a line, a couple of hundred yards from
the Causeway, the results probably would be highly unpleasant. Very
fortunately, nothing happened, and the difficulty was overcome. The
ditched tanks got themselves out, and we crawled one by one on to
Marengo Causeway, which 21 Company had crossed safely half an hour
before. Here again our luck held: at this most critical point in the
whole route not a shell fell to disturb us, and the whole column,
passing over without mishap, entered the dismal wilderness of old
trenches, wire, smashed trees, and shell-holes on the farther side.
From here onwards our route had been taped by the R.O.’s, and but for
this assistance half of the tanks must have ditched themselves or lost
their way. The broken ground, which had looked nasty enough by day,
became appalling in the pitchy darkness; and I recall this final stage
of the journey as a long black nightmare of fatigue and apprehension.
There was no track, and in many places even the tape had vanished,
displaced or buried by the leading tanks. Over the communication
trenches still in use narrow wooden bridges had been built, and these
required skilful negotiation. As I walked in front of G 46, knowing
that all my driver could see of me was the faint white patch on my
back, I was continually falling into shell-holes, tripping over debris,
or getting hung up in wire; and with the tank lumbering blindly along a
few feet behind me, these accidents put me in infinite terror of being
run over. At least one tank commander, Alden, had in fact a very narrow
escape from death or injury that night through becoming entangled in
a mass of wire. His tank cleared him by inches while he was still
struggling to get free, and then the track caught the wire and pulled
him helplessly after. He was being carried on to the roof when the
driver somehow discovered what had happened and pulled up.
The enemy now began to interfere, to add to our discomfort, by
bombarding the whole neighbourhood fairly heavily with gas-shells.
There was a battery of 4.5 howitzers firing in the open close to our
route, and possibly this was his target. Very fortunately we had been
issued with a special type of box-respirator, in which the goggles and
mouth-mask were separate, and thus were still able, at a risk to our
eyes, to see our way--more or less. With the ordinary fixed eye-pieces
it would have been next to impossible to see anything at all. As it
was, we were merely extraordinarily uncomfortable and anxious. The
Germans threw over little or no lachrymatory gas and no mustard-oil,
which then was just coming into fashion; but we could not be certain
about the latter, as it has no smell; and it was the reverse of
pleasant to have to stumble along in the dark with our eyes exposed to
what might have been doses of this atrocious decoction. All around us,
for about half an hour, there sounded the soft detonations peculiar to
gas-shells. And in the middle of the bombardment, either through this
or some other agency, a pile of cordite charges by the howitzer battery
caught fire and flared brilliantly for a few minutes. I was passing in
front of the guns at the time, and I could see that one of them had
been hit, and was lying out of action with a broken wheel; while at the
others the gunners still toiled in the glare like black automatons.
Behind them the unhappy shattered trees along the canal bank were
illuminated eerily, and in front of me a line of tanks was visible
dipping and rolling over the shell-holes. I was afraid that this brief
conflagration would draw some heavy retaliation from the enemy, but he
contented himself with gas; and while the fire lasted it was of service
to us in lighting up our route. Even the gas-shelling presently ceased;
and with no further adventures beyond periodical stumbles and searches
for the tape, we found ourselves at length under the black shadow of
the Frascati trees. We were only just in time. Dawn was breaking as the
last tank drew in; and we had taken nearly seven hours to cover 5000
yards.
IV.
Frascati Farm stood just east of the road which ran, parallel to the
canal, from Pilkem through La Brique to Ypres. The trees about the
farm, their scars then concealed in part by heavy foliage, came down
to the roadside; and to the right of them, as one approached from the
causeways, a gap in a hedge gave entrance to a shell-pitted field. Our
tanks, having been led through this gap, now lay parked up, nose to
tail, against some immense overgrown bushes which lined the southern
edge of the timber. The camouflage nets, joined together, stretched
over the whole long line. As day broke we could see some very new
shell-holes in the field; and we learnt that the place had been
shelled that night while 21 Company was moving in. One officer had
been hit in the leg, but insisted on staying with his tank and taking
it into action--a piece of plucky quixotry which kept him in hospital
afterwards for many months.
We spent that day, the 30th, in attempts to get sleep or at least rest
under the tanks and camouflage netting. The weather was nondescript and
depressing--a lowering sky threatened rain, but none fell. Throughout
the day German aeroplanes came and went with impunity above us, and
periodically shells whistled over the trees and burst in black plumes
of earth beyond the hedge along the far side of our field, between us
and Ypres. None, happily, fell any nearer. Of Ypres itself, on the low
ground about a mile away, the higher ruins, dominated by the ragged
tower of the Cloth Hall, were just visible above the hedge top. The
town was being shelled continually, so that at times quite a haze of
the familiar red-brick dust floated over it. The uproar of our own
artillery seemed less intense, perhaps because we were now in front of
the most advanced field-guns.
During those hours of waiting the incident I remember most clearly was
a discussion we had at lunch-time on the subject of English country
places we had known. It seems now an odd thing to have been sitting
there, in that forlorn region, our backs against a tank, peering
through the camouflage netting at the shells bursting in Ypres, and
comparing the peaceful beauties of Sussex and Cornwall and the Eastern
shires. Of the little company of us gathered there, Kessel was a
Cornish man whose work was in the north; Merchant was an East Anglian
from India; Brassington came from the valley of the Eden; and Alden and
myself were by way of being Cockneys of French extraction or interests.
Between us we had seen a fair part of England, and there was a peculiar
fascination, in the circumstances, in recalling pleasant holidays and
journeys achieved in those remote days when soldiering was the last of
all human professions we ever expected to adopt. All of us, I think, as
very normal unheroic people, would have given a good deal then to be
back in our own country.
A little later, toward tea-time, Major Fernie, then commanding 19
Company, appeared on the scene to wish us good luck and issue final
instructions. Company headquarters during the battle were to be
established in the dug-out at Hill Top Farm, a pile of rubble and
sandbags about a fragment of wall which stood up like a huge tooth
midway between Frascati and the front line. Throughout the expansion
of the Tank Corps the company has remained the unit of battle; the
battalion is virtually a brigade, and advanced battalion headquarters
lives during operations with the infantry division or army corps
concerned. In this case Colonel Hankey, a few hours before zero,
established himself at the 39th Divisional Headquarters in Oosthoek
Wood.
As dusk fell we began to clear for action. We filled up with petrol
from the dump among the trees and piled there all camouflage nets,
tarpaulins, and spare kit. A tank prepared for action, cluttered up
as it is with necessary stores and ammunition, has no room for other
impedimenta. The crew, wearing ordinary workshop overalls, take
with them only revolvers. In the middle of this work the enemy,
who had left us in comparative peace all day, started to shell
the neighbourhood with gas; and for some time we had to carry on
handicapped by box-respirators. The tedious business of fixing spuds
occupied the last hour before the move. Spuds were always carried
in the box on the roof until the last possible moment, as any hard
surface, such as that of a road, crushed them and put a dangerous
strain on the hard steel track-plates. Each tank carried forty-four of
these iron shoes, of which we had to clamp on about thirty that night
at Frascati--a laborious process with stiff nuts and bolts, and an
inadequate supply of spanners. My crew and I were able to fix only half
of our quota in the time, and the remainder we flung into a ditch under
the bushes, where for all I know they lie to this day, unless they have
been discovered by some puzzled Belgian labourer.
At 10.45 engines were started up, and at 11 o’clock we moved off. One
tank of 19 Company developed some internal trouble and was left behind.
The trek for a long time was devoid of any incident. The Reconnaissance
officers led: my section was now the last in the line; and I simply
followed the tank in front of me. I can remember nothing that happened
until we reached Hammond’s Corner, a road-junction near Hill Top Farm
and about a thousand yards from the front line. We were so well ahead
of time that we halted for an hour at this point. The night was very
quiet, for there was a lull in the gun-fire. The sky was clouded
and dark; but unceasingly, around the curve of the Salient--to our
right and left and even in our rear--the Very lights rose slowly and
hung for a space and faded, their diffused radiance reflected in the
crater pools and imprinting continually along the horizon ephemeral
silhouettes of naked and eerie trees. The Germans were using then a
very pretty variant of this illumination (or so I suppose it to have
been), a kind of slow rocket that soared up obliquely in straight bars
of brilliant light, one below the other. In fact the Ypres salient,
depressing in its utter ruin in the daytime and infinitely dreary and
forbidding toward dusk, assumed an inhuman beauty when night had fallen
and this semicircle of wavering incandescence began its deliberate and
irregular rise and fall.
I was still leading G 46 from outside when we halted; and after a
while I pulled myself up on to the towing shackle in front of the tank
to talk to my driver through his flap. I was so tired that in this
attitude, sitting on the unsympathetic shackle with my head on one
track and my feet on the other, I fell asleep. I was told afterwards
that several shells burst about us and exploded a small dump near at
hand, but I slept through it all. Just before we moved off again a
machine-gun barrage was started to cover the noise of our approach to
the front line. I now got inside the tank and took the brakes beside
Johnstone, as with the help of the continual stream of Very lights
it was become quite a simple matter to follow the machines in front
and even to see from the cab the tape which the R.O.’s had laid down
earlier that night. Having still ample time, we crawled forward now at
a snail’s pace, and eventually pulled up once more a quarter of an hour
before zero--which was at 3.50 A.M.--at a point 300 yards from Forward
Cottage, where we were to cross the front line. As we were not required
to overtake the infantry before the second German system was reached,
we were to start at this interval behind them. While we waited, the
thought struck me forcibly (and has recurred with every later tank
action in which I have taken part) that if the enemy had used a few
mobile searchlights at intervals throughout the night, sweeping the
area immediately behind our line for a minute at a time, he could
hardly have failed to discover us sooner or later. Now, for example,
the twenty-three tanks, covered from view only by the darkness, were
drawn up in line ahead on a forward slope little more than a quarter
of a mile from his nearest trenches. The presence of these machines
in the Salient was well known to him, and the attack had been awaited
for days. A number of searchlights on motor-trucks, as used for
anti-aircraft work, might have been brought up to the summit of the
Pilkem Ridge at many points; and if employed with discretion for short
periods and moved continually, our gunners would have found it very
difficult to hit them; while once our tanks had been seen and held in
the rays they might have been knocked to pieces in a few minutes. At
Ypres, it is true, the Germans (with some justice) were not greatly
afraid of tanks; but in later battles, particularly during the final
autumn of the war, when elaborate road systems in fair condition ran
behind the armies, the value of mobile searchlights for countering
expected tank attacks would appear to have been so considerable as
to justify any sacrifice involved. But on no occasion, so far as I
am aware, were they used for this purpose. In the course of our last
advance successive assaults, which might have been disorganised and
possibly ruined by a premature discovery of tanks moving up, were
allowed to come as a surprise.
The ultimate minutes before zero passed without event. With the aid of
the Very lights I endeavoured once more to read the map which hung in
front of me, and peered continually at my clock. A tot of whisky was
passed round the crew. The engine, just ticking over, drowned by its
throbbing the noise of the machine-gun barrage, which still continued.
In front the long line of tanks stood motionless on the gentle slope.
And so, in a dim-lit silent world we waited for the moment of attack.