FROM THE COCKCROFT TO CAMBRAI.
I.
It is no exaggeration to say that even those of us who had played the
most modest part on the 19th August awoke the following morning to find
ourselves famous--at least in the not inconsiderable world controlled
by the 5th Army. The astonishment and interest evoked by this single
little action were a measure of the perplexities confronting the Higher
Command in the Salient. In any series of operations the casualty list
may become a governing feature, as it must always be an important one.
There are limits to the price which may be paid for any gain, and there
are limits to what any troops will stand. The most highly-trained
infantry, save in exceptional circumstances, cannot be expected to
maintain their offensive spirit after sustaining a succession of
crippling losses for no very apparent result. In mid-August our
casualties at Ypres had not approached the frightful total they were
to reach before the end, nor perhaps were they as high proportionately
as in October or November; but they were becoming very serious, if
only because to the subordinate ranks, who were suffering them, they
seemed to lead nowhere and promise no cessation. One murderous attack
against wire and concrete, if it gained a little ground, meant only
increased misery for those who were left, followed, the next day or
the next week, by another murderous attack against more wire and more
concrete. One had only to look at the faces of infantry going into
the line before an assault, or even for ordinary trench duties, to
realise how the strain was telling. At this time our most precious
assets, the journalists, after walking through a cavalry camp thirty
miles behind the front or watching a brigade in rest going out with its
bands for a route-march, were writing to their newspapers about the
cheery faces of our fighting men, the grim delight they took in shells
and slaughter, and the pusillanimity and general idiocy of the enemy.
A phrase which appeared in some journal (it referred to Cambrai, but
will serve in this digression) was bandied about our camp for a long
time, as being characteristically imbecile. The writer, speaking of
a unit which had received sudden orders to move, remarked that “the
men hurried from the baths, fearing that they might miss the fight!”
For weeks after, any one seen moving hurriedly was accused of fearing
to miss the fight. This sort of rubbish may conceivably have served
some useful purpose in England; but it made extraordinary reading
in Flanders, where, after only a few weeks, there was growing upon
every one the feeling that this offensive, with its peculiar horrors
due to weather and terrain, was becoming another and more dreadful
Somme, remorseless and everlasting. And if the Higher Command still
cherished brighter hopes, they cannot have contemplated the future
without anxiety. They must have realised that Von Armin, or whoever was
responsible for the interminable series of pill-boxes and concreted
farms, had devised a method of defence which in such a country, and in
combination with the barriers that our own artillery was augmenting
daily, deserved at least as much credit for our discomfiture as that
convenient public scapegoat, the rain. Without any rain at all, there
would still have remained the problem of how to surmount quagmires
and reinforced concrete bristling with machine-guns. And then had
come what seemed a sudden and quite startling gleam of light. Here
was a group of these pestilent fortifications which had held the 18th
Corps in check for three weeks. Attempts to get near them, even,
had resulted in sanguinary repulses. A serious attack on them, it
was estimated (and it may be noted that such estimates usually are
conservative), would cost from 600 to 1000 casualties, and would be
a doubtful speculation at that. And this was only the beginning--a
little preliminary clearing away. There was the untouched German third
line beyond, and behind that again more forts.... But now, in an hour
and a half, all these initial bogies had tumbled down like ninepins,
at the ridiculous cost of fifteen wounded infantrymen and a few Tank
Corps personnel. To men habitually dealing in returns and states and
figures of every kind, arithmetic makes the most potent appeal. The
grander the scale, the more they are swayed by it. It represents, at
least to their minds, a concrete fact from which there is no escape.
They cannot fail to understand it. It is inevitable in an army that
plain figures must often be the solvent of a doubtful point. A thousand
men are always a thousand men. Here, then, was a simple comparison
of numbers which must have been very startling to some of the staffs
concerned. Here was a plain statement: in the one column an estimate
of 600 to 1000, in the other the actual expenditure--15. Generals and
G.S.O.’s who knew nothing about tanks, who never had attempted to
comprehend their tactics, but who had seen them lying bogged in scores
about the Salient, must have felt that a miracle had happened. It was
unfortunate that some of them, still wider from the mark, mistook it
for a conjuring trick, which could be repeated indefinitely.
I have laboured this point because the Cockcroft action, insignificant
in itself and forgotten long ago, did actually at the time arouse
remarkable interest in the Army as a whole, and because it affected
permanently the future of the Tank Corps. It was by far the most
complete success achieved by tanks up to that time. It proved
conclusively their potentialities as economisers of life--a point upon
which their advocates had been insisting from the beginning. It was a
striking example of their moral effect. And because it was all this,
it helped undoubtedly (although to what exact degree I cannot say) to
determine the whole future of the corps, then hanging in the balance.
Dozens and scores of tanks were thrown away in the Salient after the
Cockcroft with no adequate return for the sacrifice, but there was no
more overt talk of abolition or even of reduction. It was not a mere
coincidence that on 6th October an actual programme of expansion to
18 battalions, already rejected in June, was confidently put forward
again. It was approved in a hurry immediately after Cambrai in
November; and indirectly the Cockcroft led to Cambrai.
II.
While the first glad rapture lasted, G Battalion basked in a rare blaze
of popularity. To any one of a cynical turn of mind--and I think that
prolonged experience of the Army induces that spirit in most people of
moderate acumen--the days immediately following the action must have
provided much quiet amusement. The very morning after, while those
of us who had been the innocent actors in the scene were making up
for lost time in bed, the camp was thronged with exalted visitors. A
deluge of congratulatory telegrams descended upon the Colonel. Most
significant of all, perhaps, Mr Beach Thomas, of the ‘Daily Mail,’ felt
impelled to leave the seclusion of the Ternoise Valley to gather copy
among our tents at Lovie. The actors, however, all being in bed when he
arrived, he was captured very fortunately by 19 Company, who immured
him in their mess until he had to leave. Their only representative in
the caste, through no fault of his own, had never got into action at
all; but this fact was no bar to their imaginations, and they supplied
the journalist with what must have been a very highly-coloured version
of the facts. The result, to our great joy, appeared a few days
later in the ‘Times’ and the ‘Daily Mail,’ in an account of a most
extraordinary and Homeric conflict in which the inevitable “leviathans”
figured prominently, but in which, oddly enough, those of us who had
been there were unable to recognise a single detail.
The most gratifying tribute came in the form of a Special Order by the
18th Corps commander, General Maxse, addressed to G Battalion, in which
he thanked all ranks for their efforts, and frankly attributed the
success his corps had attained at such a trifling cost entirely to the
tanks. I regret having lost the copy I made of this letter, which was
quite exceptional in form and substance. Hardly had we digested these
unusual compliments when it was intimated that the Army commander,
General Gough, wished to see some of the officers and men who had
been in action on the 19th. Five of us, therefore, paraded with our
crews the following morning near the old tank park in Oosthoek Wood.
A curious but characteristic incident marked this ceremony. Coutts,
with his crew fallen in behind him, was on the right of our little
line: I was next to him. As the General approached, his Staff quite
obviously shepherded him past Coutts and diverted him on to me. With
his first question I realised the reason for this manœuvre. He asked
me if the infantry had supported me properly. I was able to testify,
quite honestly, that they had; and Morgan, Close, and Baker, who were
the other three present, could give equally satisfactory answers. Some
rumour must have reached the Staff about the trouble at the Cockcroft,
and Coutts, who might have made damaging revelations, was given no
opportunity to speak. It was a little thing, but instructive.
As a final result of the action, so far as we were concerned, Coutts,
Baker, and Morgan received an immediate award of the Military Cross.
In the meantime an attempt had been made to repeat our success, on the
principle of the conjuring trick. Of the strong-points in front of
the 18th Corps there still remained intact those along the eastern
side of the triangle, the Zonnebeke-Langemarck road. There can be
little doubt that we could have accounted for these places on the
19th, especially if the two reserve tanks had been brought in. The
Germans were then completely surprised, in ignorance of what actually
was happening (on account of the very effective smoke barrage), and,
for the time being, thoroughly demoralised. They were even running
from their third-line trenches, as has been recorded. If the original
plan of attack had been allowed to stand, there was nothing, barring
accidents, to prevent Claughton, Chaddock, and me, with the reserve
tanks, from pushing on from Hillock Farm and the gun-pits right round
the triangle, and capturing also Springfield, Winnipeg, and the other
forts near them--all of which lay on the road. The task, however, had
been left unfinished; and on the 22nd a company of D Battalion, with
the necessary infantry, went in to complete it. The attack was designed
on the lines of our operation. At the same time tanks from the 2nd and
3rd Brigades advanced with the 2nd and 19th Corps on the right against
similar forts and subsidiary works on their fronts. The result was
not very encouraging. The Germans this time were wide awake, and the
stratagems which had proved so successful in effecting a surprise on
the 19th could hardly be expected to deceive again so soon after. In
some cases also where tanks reached their objectives, the infantry was
unable to follow. On the right, part of Glencorse Wood was carried with
the help of four tanks. On the 19th Corps front, where even the roads
had been almost wholly blown away, the tanks of the 3rd Brigade could
do little and the infantry less. One very remarkable feat, however,
was accomplished by a tank of F Battalion. This machine, on board of
which was the section commander, Richardson, was detailed to attack a
field-fort called Gallipoli, south-east of St Julien. The infantry were
to follow behind in the now accepted fashion. They did not follow; and
the tank became ditched in what virtually was No Man’s Land, although
the phrase had lost some of its definite connotation in the fighting
for these isolated forts. The tank was so far ahead of our line, in
fact, that it was believed to be captured, and a steady fire was
opened and maintained on it from rifles and machine-guns. The Germans,
of course, were firing on it from the other side. The tank commander
was wounded almost at once, and Richardson took command. This was on
the morning of the 22nd. The situation continued the same throughout
the day, the crew being unable to evacuate the tank owing to the fire
from our lines. At the same time they were able with their own guns to
break up several German counter-attacks which were gathering behind
Gallipoli. At night-time the Germans closed on the tank, and eventually
brought a machine-gun to within a few yards, and even climbed on the
roof. Our own people, imagining the tank to have been converted into
a hostile strong-point, continued to fire briskly in its direction.
It was still holding out the next morning, however, and continued to
defend itself during the day--the 23rd. Signals to our own line were
attempted, but produced no result. A second night supervened, and
again the Germans closed in with machine-guns and grenades, but failed
entirely to subdue the defence. These attacks, in fact, caused them
considerable losses. But when day broke on the 24th, the situation
inside the tank was becoming serious. One man had been killed, every
other member of the crew except Richardson himself was wounded,
and food and ammunition were running short. The condition in that
restricted space, with one dead man and several badly wounded lying
among the others’ feet in blood and oil, must have been appalling. Yet
for another whole day the tank held out under the double fire. Any
attempt to signal to our people was made dangerous by their misdirected
zeal, and was never understood. This could not continue. At any risk
the infantry must be made to realise the true state of affairs; and
after dark a man contrived to crawl back to our front line under a
constant fire from both sides. The situation was now made clear to
our troops, and their fire ceased. Richardson was able to evacuate all
his wounded men without mishap. The tank had been held for seventy-two
hours under these extraordinary circumstances, had killed or wounded a
great number of the enemy, and had disorganised at the outset several
budding counter-attacks--a feat without parallel, and one which
well merited the special complimentary order issued from Tank Corps
Headquarters. Richardson received the D.S.O., and the tank commander
the M.C.
Returning to the operations on the 22nd, we find D Battalion’s tanks
moving up by our old route through St Julien. The road was no longer
as quiet, however, as it had been four days earlier. On the night of
the 20th, in particular, it was shelled heavily, and four of the tanks
were hit and disabled during the approach-march. Four of ours from
Ghent Cottages, being the nearest reserve, were sent up to replace
the casualties and handed over to D Battalion crews. The action which
followed was moderately successful, Winnipeg and Springfield being
carried; but the losses in infantry and tank personnel were heavy,
and a large proportion of the tanks were ditched and abandoned. In
all the attacks on the 22nd, every tank which left the roads became
instantly bellied, some sinking into four or six feet of water. Out of
thirty-four machines employed on the three corps’ fronts, eighteen were
lost from this cause and six were hit by shell-fire.
It will be unnecessary to describe in any detail the further operations
in the Salient in which tanks took part. They provide the same dreary
experiences, were almost uniformly unsuccessful, and possess no novel
tactical features for consideration. They should never have been
attempted. By this time E Battalion had come out from England and
joined the 1st Brigade, having its camp at Lovie and its tanks in
Oosthoek Wood, and before long it also was flung into the hopeless
struggle with the elements. After a series of minor affairs on 23rd,
26th, and 27th August, in which a few tanks of the 2nd Brigade were
involved and inevitably lost, without accomplishing anything at all,
a pause lasting for nearly a month ensued in the general operations.
We were still in front of the original German third line, and guns
had somehow to be got forward and arrangements completed for another
formal assault. The weather improved in September, but this made
little difference to the state of the ground, which was broken up by
shell-fire as fast as it attempted to dry. The attack took place on
20th September, extending from the extreme right of the Salient (where
the 2nd Army had now taken over a part of the 5th Army front) to the
north of Langemarck. Tanks were to operate as on 31st July, following
up the infantry to deal with the fortified farms along the second and
third objectives. This was a reversion to the old bad manner, and in
the event was almost a complete failure, although the tanks endeavoured
to keep to the roads. Four machines sent in by the 2nd Brigade went to
swell the crowd of derelicts in the quagmire by the Menin road, known
as the “tanks’ cemetery.” Of nineteen tanks from E Battalion, thirteen
were ditched and four hit; while only three out of fifteen from D ever
got near the fight at all. The Germans had grasped very quickly some
of the lessons of this road fighting, and trees had been felled across
the roads in such a position as to offer the greatest obstruction to
tanks. On the night of the 22nd-23rd, D and E Battalions tried to get
one tank apiece into action by dawn and failed. A further attempt on
the 26th met with the same fate. In the meantime the infantry attack
had succeeded to the extent that our line was advanced everywhere to
an average depth of 1000 yards, and minor operations on the 18th Corps
front during the last days of the month brought us to the outskirts
of Poelcapelle. On October 4th this village was captured. By heroic
exertions some tanks of D Battalion were at last able to render
substantial help, forcing the surrender of Gloucester and Terrier Farms
and entering Poelcapelle itself with the infantry. On the same day a
section from A Battalion was in action farther south, and Captain
Robertson, who was in command, died and was awarded a posthumous V.C.,
after what has been well described as “one of the most patiently
courageous actions of the war.” His tanks had to cross a bridge over
a stream called the Reutelbeek, and drive the enemy from positions on
the farther side. For three days and nights Robertson and his servant
(who won the D.C.M.) went to and fro over the ground, reconnoitring
and taping routes, always under heavy fire. They returned from their
last trip at 9.30 on the evening of the 3rd, and Robertson at once
began to lead the tanks forward. For seventy hours already he had been
almost continually under fire, without rest of any kind. He led his
section to the assembly point, and the weather being misty and the
ground execrably bad, went on again with it at zero, still walking in
front. Amid increasingly heavy shelling he guided his tanks down to the
bridge, across it, and on toward a road which would take them, beyond
any chance of error, to their objectives. The tanks, now visible to
the enemy and far ahead of the following infantry, drew a furious hail
of rifle and machine-gun fire; and Robertson, having brought them to
the road and launched them to the attack, was shot through the head.
“But the tanks went on, and succeeded in their mission. The object for
which Captain Robertson had so deliberately sacrificed his life was
achieved.”[19]
The attacks at Poelcapelle and on the Reutelbeek, on the same morning,
were the only successful tank actions in all the dreary weeks since
mid-August. The 2nd and 3rd Tank Brigades were now withdrawn to refit.
The 1st Brigade was to make one more attempt and to suffer the most
calamitous failure of all.
[Illustration: D Battalion Tank ditched on remains of Poelcapelle
Church, October 4, 1917.]
On the 7th October, tanks of D Battalion were to have attacked certain
forts along the Poelcapelle road, beyond the village. One became
ditched, however, blocking the road, and before a way could be made
round the derelict it was too late to go on. Two nights later eight
tanks of the same battalion left St Julien (where they had been lying
concealed by reddish-brown camouflage designed to blend with the ruins)
to repeat the attempt. Their starting-point was the Retour cross-roads,
south of Poelcapelle. The main road itself, that tragic thoroughfare,
was now in a condition baffling description. It was shelled without
ceasing day and night, and its shattered surface, swimming in liquid
mud after thirty hours’ rain, was littered with a frightful welter of
dismembered men and animals and broken limbers. Before the cross-roads
were reached, one tank slipped over the edge and was submerged
instantly in several feet of water. The remainder arrived at Retour,
and thence crawled on into Poelcapelle. The night was as black as
the Pit: it was raining in torrents; and upon the destroyed village
was crashing a more terrible rain of shells. At the point beyond the
cemetery where two roads converge upon the main street, one from
Langemarck and one from the railway station on the Ypres-Staden line,
the leading tank became bellied in the mud and rubble, tried to free
herself with her unditching beam, broke that, and remained immovable.
Just behind her the second tank was hit almost simultaneously by a
shell and disabled. These two completely blocked the road, and as there
was no way round, the others decided to return. But in the meantime the
last tank had fouled D 44, the machine abandoned on the road two nights
earlier, and in the collision became ditched herself, thus closing
the way home. The four tanks in the middle were trapped. One or two
attempted to find a way round, but were bogged the instant they left
the _pavé_. Those left on the road were hit again and again, and most
of their people were killed or wounded.
[Illustration: Poelcapelle Church before the advance in August,
September, &c., 1917. (German Photo.)]
In itself this was a lamentable disaster, and its results were
peculiarly unfortunate; for the six or seven burnt and ruined tanks
blocked completely the Poelcapelle road, an artery upon which the
troops in front depended for all supplies, and which was essential to
any further operations. It rested with the Tank Corps to remove these
obstructions. A party under the Chief Engineer of the 1st Brigade
began the work at once. It had to be done at night, and then under
conditions of extreme danger, for the Germans knew perfectly well what
was happening, and shelled the village and the road ferociously. One
by one the tanks, filled not only with their own dead but with the
bodies of wounded infantrymen who had crawled in from that tormented
street to die, were blown up by heavy charges of gun-cotton. Within
a week the ghastly road was clear again, except for the human debris
which accumulated always there. And in the noise and flame of these
explosions the active work of the Tank Corps in the Salient came also
to an end. Only the salvage branch returned after a season to gather in
that which remained.
III.
G Battalion, having borne the brunt in the early days, was so fortunate
as to escape the horrors of this later period. It did not go into
action again after the Cockcroft, although at the end of October every
preparation was made, and the approach-march actually was begun for
what promised to be a grisly undertaking at Spriet, between Poelcapelle
and Westroosebeke. To the profound relief of every one concerned,
this affair was cancelled at the last minute. I was away at the time
at the Wormhoudt rest-camp (actually a very pleasant house in the
village), where I had been sent after becoming a victim to a sort of
mild dysentery which swept through our unhealthy quarters at Lovie. As
I was supposed to be suffering also from a slightly strained heart,
due theoretically to exertions undergone at a special course on tank
repairs, I returned to camp about 20th October with instructions to do
only light duty for a fortnight.
I had been away nearly three weeks. Everything was very much as I
had left it. The bustle and worry aroused by the Spriet episode had
subsided, and it was common knowledge that tanks would not be used
again in the Salient. There was the usual talk of our withdrawing to
Blangy, or some other village in the Erin neighbourhood, for winter
training. As a battalion we were rather scattered at this time. 20
and 21 Companies still lived in the camp at Lovie, but 19 Company,
always exclusive, had chosen for some obscure reason to bury itself
in Oosthoek Wood. An assortment of tanks belonging to all three
companies still lived in the wood, and about as many more were at Ghent
Cottages. I do not think we had more than fifteen machines altogether
that were fit: the remainder were under repair, or were still lying
derelict between Admirals Road and the Cockcroft. Nor, when it came
to a pinch, had we too many men available, notwithstanding our very
moderate casualties. It was the curse of all tank units under the
latest establishment that, with more extra duties than any branch of
the service, they had virtually no extra duty men. Battalions now came
out with the bare total sufficient for the fighting crews and a few
essential fatigues and guards, and a proportion of this total might be
written off permanently for brigade duties and instructional courses at
Erin or elsewhere. At this time, for example, with our strength reduced
by these causes, and also by casualties and illness, we had to find
guards for the camp at Lovie, the camp and tanks at Oosthoek, and the
tanks at Ghent Cottages; also for a brigade petrol and ammunition dump
at Vlamertinghe (whose _raison d’être_ no one ever had discovered), and
for one of our own at Dirty Bucket Corner; while for a time there was
a dump also at St Julien, now become comparatively a peaceful spot. A
guard can always be calculated at three times its actual strength, for
in addition to the men on duty there are those who are just going on
duty, and those who have just come off. Whenever one wanted an N.C.O.
or man in those days, he was certain to fall within one of these three
categories, and in consequence to be unavailable. The old headquarters
sections, which had existed for a time at Wool, would have been
invaluable in the field, to leave the fighting crews free for their
proper work. The result of this multiplication of small duties with
our inadequate personnel was that when we received the usual sudden
orders to leave the Salient, bag and baggage, and the camp had to be
struck and the tanks prepared for entrainment on the same day, these
simultaneous tasks, four miles apart, had to be performed in theory
by the same men--which was absurd. In my own case, I found I had not
a single member of my crew at liberty to help me with my tank. Half
were on guard somewhere, and half were striking tents and packing up at
Lovie. I was obliged to borrow a couple of workshops men to drive the
machine on to the train.
Alden having reclaimed G 47 after the Cockcroft, I had been given my
third tank, by name “Goliath”--a very proper translation from the
variety stage to the Scriptures. She had been recovered from the swamp
where she had been left on 31st July, and after being furbished up she
was as good, or better, than new, for she possessed the best-running
engine in the company, and was notoriously a fast machine. She never
left Oosthoek Wood, however, after her return there, until we finally
departed; and as it fell out I had only one opportunity of seeing what
she could do.
After the middle of October our advanced tanks were moved back to
Oosthoek from Ghent Cottages, preparatory to what we supposed would
be a withdrawal to refit, following the example of the 2nd and 3rd
Brigades. E and D Battalions were also collected once more in the wood,
with what machines remained to them. Reinforcements, however, began to
arrive from Central Workshops, and as quite a number of salved tanks
were under repair, our nominal establishments once more grew toward
completion. This seemed to point to the fact that the 1st Brigade would
not be withdrawn to refit, but was to be employed again before very
long. No whisper escaped, so far as I am aware, of what actually was
intended. It was realised that no further work was expected of tanks
in the Salient, where operations had dwindled down to a final struggle
for Passchendaele village, all attempt to reach Westroosebeke, on the
highest part of the ridge, having been abandoned; but beyond that we
knew nothing. Nor, in our hand-to-mouth existence, did we waste much
time on speculation. I believe there was some talk of a surprise attack
in the Lens area, but what interested us most was the question of
leave, which was scandalously overdue.
Late in October came preliminary orders for a move to our old
driving-ground at Wailly, near Arras, for instructional purposes and
training with infantry--this last so obviously called for and so long
demanded that it served as an excellent camouflage for the real object,
and persuaded most of us who thought at all about the matter that
nothing further was intended. We were in the penultimate month of the
year, and judging, as we naturally were inclined to do, by the weather
and ground at Ypres, training seemed all that was left for tanks until
the following spring. I have forgotten the exact date when our final
movement orders arrived, but it must have been about the 1st or 2nd of
November. We were to move at once, but there was nothing surprising in
this, as all orders in the Army are delivered on principle at the last
moment, and sometimes after it. There ensued, of course, a frightful
scramble. The Tank Corps, being a sedentary organisation which requires
huge facilities in transport and rolling-stock for any serious
removal, wherever it settles down gathers an immense amount of stores,
public and private. We had been four months in the Salient; and apart
altogether from the spare tank equipment to which we were legitimately
entitled, and could not part from if we wished, the personal baggage
of G Battalion alone was little short of a scandal. We were going
to train for the winter in an inhospitable region of chalk trenches
and barbed wire, and very naturally we took what comforts we could.
Huts, furniture, souvenirs, duckboards, and other rubbish had to be
carried by our long-suffering transport down to Oosthoek and shipped
on board tanks and trucks. 21 Company had just erected an elaborate
mess, beautifully made by our carpenters of timber, wire-netting, and
tarred felt, with linen windows and a canvas lining. This also must
be pulled down and carried with us. It was little wonder, in short,
that there were few men available to look after such trifles as the
tanks themselves. Final orders had come through on the morning of a
pouring wet day. All three companies were to leave from the Oosthoek
ramp thirty-six hours later. After a frenzied evening spent in packing
and jettisoning my personal belongings, I went down next morning to
the wood to prepare the tank for the move. The weather was now fine,
but by this time the interior of Oosthoek was filthy beyond words. The
continual coming and going of tanks during the past months, and the
immense downfall of rain, aggravated by the dripping trees, had reduced
the ground to a swamp excelled only in the heavily bombarded areas.
On one occasion an entire engine, weighing a ton or two, having been
removed from a tank, sank completely in the slough and was lost and
forgotten, being discovered weeks later by some one stubbing his toe
against it. All unnecessary movement of tanks eventually was forbidden
in the wood, as they actually became ditched there. On three sides of
“Goliath,” as it happened, there was now a deep pool. Having no men
to help me, for reasons already given, I spent the morning splashing
about in this water, struggling single-handed to fold and stow away
huge and sodden tarpaulin sheets and camouflage nets, unbolting the
sponsons, and finally driving the latter inboard with a sledge-hammer.
Happily “Goliath,” in spite of its name, was a female tank. Male
sponsons, even of the new type, required several men with crowbars and
other implements to push them in. After lunch in a small mess which 20
Company had rigged up in the wood, I collected two workshops’ men,
borrowed Johnstone from a guard where I had discovered him, and in
this way got the tank driven on to the ramp, where several others were
waiting for the first train.
D and E Battalions had already left; and with our departure only a few
broken-down machines, dedicated to salvage, would remain in Oosthoek
Wood. Before dark, which fell early now, 20 and 21 Companies, with
all their paraphernalia, were on the first two trains. 19 Company was
following next day. And then ensued one of those interminable waits to
which, in the Army, one becomes accustomed without becoming reconciled.
The night was intensely cold, with a wicked north-east wind and a moon
and stars frostily brilliant; and hour after hour we stamped about the
military road or gathered round the primus stoves on which the mess
staff brewed cocoa and hot rum at frequent intervals. In theory I was
still on light duty, and did not in fact feel aggressively robust;
and as I had been soaked to the knees half a dozen times during the
day, these freezing hours of waiting induced a foreboding that before
long I should be down again with a chill. It was two o’clock in the
morning before the first train got away. By a rare stroke of fortune it
included a first-class coach for officers, in which we were comfortable
enough and even moderately warm. The journey took about fifteen hours,
as we went at the usual tank-train pace round the usual periphery of
Hazebrouck, Lillers, St Pol, and Doullens, and we drew into Beaumetz,
the station for Wailly, some time after dark that evening. Every one
in the Tank Corps knows Beaumetz, with its long street of half-ruined
and generally abandoned houses on the Arras-Doullens road, its
roofless railway station, and its single clean and reputable café,
where a pig-tailed and precocious infant called Émilie (or some such
name) cheeked the patrons without respect for rank or age. We had no
time for the café that night, however. The tanks had to be detrained
and parked near by, and then came the business of unloading all our
stores and lumber. The vast amount of the latter produced a bitter
and thoroughly justifiable outcry from the exhausted R.T.O., who had
been dealing with tank trains for the last three or four nights and
was heartily tired of the sight of them. It was approaching midnight
before we had finished unloading this stuff and conveying most of it
across to the tanks, and then after a meal of hot stew on the platform
it became a question of finding somewhere to sleep. It was still fine,
but colder than ever. The men were sleeping in the tanks or under the
tarpaulin covers, and to the officers fell the spacious but otherwise
negligible accommodation of the station itself. Kessel and some others
burrowed into a big stack of fodder by the side of the line. Chaddock
and I, feeling like Scott or Shackleton, unstrapped our valises, laid
them out on the Arctic platform, and tied ourselves up inside with
Balaclava helmets over our heads. An icy hurricane whistled through the
station all night, and my expected chill, already developing, was not
definitely improved by this rather foolish arrangement.
The distance from Beaumetz to the training-ground at Wailly is about
five miles. We moved off in the course of the morning, and my new
machine showed her capabilities by arriving three-quarters of an hour
ahead of anybody else. An advance party, travelling by lorry, had begun
already to erect a camp in the usual area, which actually was just
outside the village of Rivière. The whole countryside swarmed with
tanks, all three brigades being concentrated here. H and I Battalions
had followed E from England, making a total of nine battalions, three
to a brigade. Altogether, with gun-carriers and supply-tanks, upwards
of 400 machines were gathered at Wailly during those early November
days. And, the moment one arrived, one’s eye was caught by a suggestive
novelty. Lying everywhere about the ground, or lifted high on the
cabs of tanks, were the immense brushwood fascines designed for the
Hindenburg line.
My own stay at Wailly, however, was brief, uncomfortable, and
inglorious. On the second day after my arrival I was in bed in my tent
with one of the innumerable maladies classed together by the Army
under the symbol P.U.O. In other words, I had a high temperature and
semi-crippled legs. As the temperature improved, the legs got worse;
and after four or five days I was despatched under protest to the
nearest field-ambulance at Ficheux.
Owing to this unfortunate illness (a mild sort of “trench leg” which
crippled me for a month), I was not present at the battle of Cambrai.
Most of the ground over which it was fought is unfamiliar to me, as,
although I took part in the operations which led incidentally to the
fall of Cambrai itself in the following autumn, our line of advance
then lay to the north of the old battlefield. Only Bourlon and Bourlon
Wood I know rather intimately. In any case, however, the battle has
been described so often that its general outline should be familiar to
most people; and I wish to fill in that outline from the point of view
of the Tank Corps, and to correct the inaccuracies and wilful omissions
which abound in most published narratives, rather than attempt in
detail to relate the various phases of the battle. The actual story
will be better left to open the second part of this book, because
Cambrai stands for that great turn in the fortunes of the Tank Corps
to which such an action as the Cockcroft gave only a small initial
impulse; but we can consider very briefly here the means which brought
about so startling an experiment.
Ever since its inception, the Tank Corps had been demanding a fair
trial. It is one thing to demand, and another to receive. It so
happened that tanks entered the field at a time when certain new
tactical theories were being elaborated in practice. There was the
theory of the limited objective, and the theory of the annihilating
preliminary bombardment. Both of these broke down in the end: the
first, because it often was the enemy, and not ourselves, who decided
the limit of the objective; and the second, because the preliminary
bombardment was found to defeat its own designs, as at Ypres. In an
admirable and most interesting book on the Gallipoli campaign, recently
published, General Callwell points out repeatedly that the most obvious
means to some military end must be no less obvious to the enemy, unless
the latter be afflicted by the Gods with judicial blindness, and upon
this it is not safe to count. Given two armies of approximately equal
strength and resources, facing one another from lines of trenches which
cannot be turned, and excluding all miracles and other improbable
contingencies, the normal expedients adopted by one side will have
been foreseen by the other. We thought it astonishing on the Somme
that the German machine-gun posts remained in action after the most
terrific bombardment. But they had been designed to that end, with
profound dug-outs that no bombardment could injure. The army, in short,
that hopes to win speedily under these conditions, and does not count
solely on that blessed but two-edged word “attrition,” must have some
abnormal factor up its sleeve. We possessed such a factor in the tanks.
The initial surprise effected by tanks on the Somme was nothing. Their
exceeding value lay in the fact that, properly used, they could always
effect a surprise. They could take the place of all that preliminary
bombardment which announced to the enemy the approaching attack days
and weeks before it was to materialise. There are, of course, two sorts
of surprises in war. There is the sort employed at Ypres, where your
opponent knows you are going to attack him, but does not know when.
There is the less common sort, when he does not expect you to attack at
all, has made no preparations for an attack, and probably is asleep.
Tanks were valuable enough in the first case, but tanks alone now could
bring about the second. Wire and machine-guns had forbidden a genuine
surprise to any combination of the other arms. The German use of poison
gas, designed originally to effect a surprise, was successful up to
a point because it had not been foreseen, but it was countered at
once by the gas-mask. There was no such thing possible, however, as a
tank-mask. Provided tanks were used on suitable ground, in sufficient
numbers, and with an infantry trained to support them, no dependable
antidote to them existed. We had discovered--and this includes the
French, whose _artillerie d’assaut_ were invented independently of our
tanks--a very powerful weapon which the Germans in their blindness
had for some reason put aside. The idea must have occurred to them.
Apparently, until it was too late, they pinned their faith to heavy
howitzers, masses of men, and the excellence of their military
machine. Afterwards they had neither the plant nor the labour to
spare. They were building tanks before Cambrai, but these were obvious
makeshifts--glorified tractors of great size and considerable speed,
but clumsy and inconvenient to a degree.
The abnormal factor, then, was in our hands. For a year it had been
wasted. Circumstances, presumably unavoidable, had led our series of
offensives to incline always northward, where the conditions grew
steadily worse; and when, after the Somme, Arras, and Messines, tanks
found themselves at Ypres, it was felt that if the Army decided to
wage a campaign on the Goodwin Sands the unfortunate machines would be
called there too. And during all this time their peculiar attribute of
affecting a genuine surprise, and, by so doing, revolutionising modern
war, had hardly been tested.
On 17th September, while the Ypres battle was dragging out its weary
programme, General Elles (as he now was) visited the commander of the
Third Army, Sir Julian Byng. This army now held the southern extremity
of the British line, opposite that part of the so-called Hindenburg
system which covered the important railway centre of Cambrai. Following
up the German retreat in the early spring, we had come to a halt in
front of these fabulous earthworks, and had remained quiescent ever
since. It was notoriously the most peaceful section of the line, a
place where No Man’s Land often was 1000 yards across, with the
hostile trenches out of sight behind a hill, the Mecca of every wearied
and decimated unit withdrawn from the Salient for a rest. Virtually
untouched by war, except that the fields, long untended, grew nothing
but coarse grass and weeds, it was an undulating, hedgeless, chalk
country, dotted with frequent villages, a few small copses and one or
two more pretentious woods, criss-crossed by sunken roads, and watered
by several insignificant streams and two important canals. Athwart
it, from north-west to south-east, ran the irregular trace of the
Hindenburg Line, eight miles from Cambrai at the nearest point on the
Bapaume road. This line was known to be weakly held. The immense belts
of wire and the innumerable machine-guns were trusted, and justifiably,
to fend off any orthodox attack by the very moderate forces under
General Byng. The Tank Corps, however, alone among the various branches
of the Service, had looked for months upon the Hindenburg Line as
a lawful and easy prey. The wire was no obstacle at all, and the
trenches, whispered of as though they were Charon’s seven streams,
were not worth even an obolus. They had been crossed at Bullecourt,
and human ingenuity was equal to devising some means of bridging those
which might exceed a tank’s allotted span. The country was all that
could be desired--firm, unbroken by shell-fire, and well drained. Every
circumstance had long pointed to this region for an offensive carried
out, as the Tank Corps maintained all offensives should be carried
out--led and determined by tanks, and launched, without any overt
preliminaries, as a genuine surprise. With these ideas General Elles
had no difficulty in infecting the 3rd Army commander. A general plan
of attack on this front had been worked out some time before. It was
altered and trimmed to suit the particular conditions now in view, and
the completed scheme was submitted to the Commander-in-Chief.
Three considerations, one may suppose, helped especially to recommend
it to Sir Douglas Haig. The Ypres offensive, however it might be
disguised in public, was a lamentable failure, and needed some
corrective; the Russian collapse was setting free the best German
troops from the East; and within a few months it might be impossible to
strike a blow anywhere with a reasonable hope of success. It is likely
also that some rumours of the forthcoming stroke on the Italian front
helped to quicken a decision. In any case, the scheme was approved
on 20th October, and was fixed for a date exactly one month later.
Unfortunately, G.H.Q. had not the courage of its convictions--or of the
convictions of others. Probably in this case it had no convictions of
its own. It did not believe that tanks, even when working under their
own chosen conditions, could perform all that they claimed ability
to perform. A highly interesting article by M. Paul Painlevé, French
Minister of War in March 1917, contains an account of a visit to our
G.H.Q. in that month, where, he records, the general opinion was in
favour of “having a smack” at the enemy. This characteristic but rather
primitive attitude undoubtedly governed the decision to carry out the
Cambrai attack. Having lost upwards of a quarter of a million of men
at Ypres, it was as well to have as cheap “a smack” at the enemy as
possible. The conditions laid down manifested in every article the
spirit of compromise. If the Tank Corps liked to sacrifice itself
wholesale, well and good, but no additional infantry could be provided.
The 3rd Army must make the most of its very slender resources in this
respect. (It was stated officially that any additional concentration
of troops would have betrayed the coming attack to the enemy. But it
is difficult to accept this reasoning. On the 8th August 1918, to name
only one instance, several army corps were gathered behind the line
in perfect secrecy.) Finally, the whole operation was to be completed
within forty-eight hours at the most, this being the time it was
calculated the enemy would require to bring up reinforcements.
Restricted as it was, the opportunity was welcomed by all concerned--in
especial by the Tank Corps, which saw at last a prospect of proving in
the field those theories it had advocated in and out of season for the
past twelve months. Preparations, already begun, were expedited, and
the concentration of the three brigades at Wailly was put in hand.
PART II.
THE SECOND PHASE:
CAMBRAI AND AFTER
CHAPTER XIII.
CAMBRAI.
I.
The Tank Corps had to accomplish an immense amount of work in a very
short time before the battle of Cambrai. This preparation consisted of
five main features:--
1. The arrangements for secrecy.
2. The concentrating of three brigades of tanks at Wailly, and
their subsequent dispersal to detraining centres behind the
Cambrai front.
3. Rehearsals with the infantry of the plan of attack.
4. The construction of certain devices for crossing the wider
trenches of the Hindenburg Line, for bringing up supplies, and
for clearing the wire for the cavalry.
5. The establishment of petrol and ammunition dumps.
We will take these features in order.
The whole 3rd Army was involved in the question of secrecy. The
bringing up of numerous additional batteries to positions close
behind the front line, the assembling of several cavalry divisions,
and all the thousand and one preparations for an advance on a wide
front had to be completed without a suspicion reaching the enemy.
This was accomplished successfully. The normal artillery activity
was maintained, while dozens of new batteries were brought up and
camouflaged. None of these were able to register before the battle
opened. The Tank Corps, meanwhile, had its own especial difficulties.
The withdrawal of one brigade from the Salient and another from the
Lens front could not be wholly concealed, but the myth of winter
training deceived the enemy, if he heard of it, as thoroughly as
it deceived the troops concerned; and the activities of one or two
wireless tanks, left at the front to send bogus messages, easily
intercepted, to imaginary brigade headquarters, fostered the belief
that the latter had not moved. The forward H.Q. established with the
3rd Army at Albert was disguised as the Tank Corps Training Office. In
the beginning only four members of General Elles’s staff knew of the
forthcoming attack. The information was next revealed to battalion and
company commanders and reconnaissance officers; and last of all, only
two or three days before 20th November, zero day, section and tank
commanders were admitted to the secret. Reconnaissance was carried out
with every precaution, distinctive badges being hidden or removed,
and senior officers visited the front disguised in steel helmets and
trench-coats.
Thirty-six tank trains were needed for the almost simultaneous removal
of the nine battalions. Our supply of K.T. trucks being insufficient,
it was necessary to borrow a number of the smaller French type. A vast
amount of work was thrown on the railway staff, all the entraining
and detraining being carried out at night. In four or five nights
upwards of 450 machines were entrained at Beaumetz. Twenty-seven
train-loads were concentrated at Plateau Station, near Albert, by the
14th November, and dispersed to their final detraining points during
the three following days, the remaining nine trains reaching Plateau
on the 15th. Only the most careful management could have succeeded
in disposing of these slow and heavy trains, amid all the normal
traffic, in so short a time without a hitch. The 1st Brigade detrained
finally at Bertincourt and Ruyaulcourt, behind Havrincourt Wood, the
2nd Brigade at Sorel and Ytres, to the south, and the 3rd Brigade
at Heudicourt, near Epehy. At all these railheads new ramps had to
be built or old ones repaired. With one or two minor accidents, 378
fighting tanks and 98 administrative machines were assembled at points
from two to four miles behind the lines on zero minus two days--18th
November.
The plan of attack and its rehearsal with the infantry at Wailly cannot
be described more lucidly than in the account given in ‘Weekly Tank
Notes,’ the official publication already referred to. I will quote this
account entire.
“Before the infantry assembled for training a new tactics had
to be devised, not only to meet the conditions which would
be encountered, but to fit the limitations imposed upon the
tank by it only being able to carry one tank fascine. Once
this fascine was cast it could not be picked up again without
considerable difficulty.
“Briefly the tactics decided on were worked out to meet
the following requirements: ‘To effect a penetration of
four systems of trenches in a few hours without any type of
artillery preparation.’ They were as follows:--
“Each objective was divided up into tank section attack areas
according to the number of tactical points in the objective,
and a separate echelon, or line, of tanks was allotted to each
objective. Each section was to consist of three machines--one
advance-guard tank and two infantry tanks; this was agreed to
on account of there not being sufficient tanks in France to
bring sections up to four machines apiece.
“The duty of the advance-guard tank was to keep down the
enemy’s fire and to protect the infantry tanks as they led the
infantry through the enemy’s wire and over his trenches. The
allotment of the infantry to tanks depended on the strength of
the objective to be attacked and the nature of the approaches;
their formation was that of sections in single file with a
leader to each file. They were organised in three forces:
trench clearers to operate with the tanks; trench stops to
block the trenches at various points; and trench supports to
garrison the captured trench and form an advance-guard to the
next echelon of tanks and infantry passing through.
“The whole operation was divided into three phases: the
assembly, the approach, and the attack. The first was carried
out at night-time and was a parade drill, the infantry falling
in behind the tanks on tape lines, connected with their
starting-points by taped routes. The approach was slow and
orderly, the infantry holding themselves in readiness to act
on their own initiative. The attack was regulated so as to
economise tank fascines, and was carried out as follows:--
“The advance-guard tank went straight forward through the
enemy’s wire, and turning to the left, without crossing the
trench in front of it, opened right sponson broadsides; the
infantry tanks then made for the same spot, the left-hand one,
crossing the wire, approached the trench and cast its fascine,
then crossed over the fascine, turned to the left, and worked
down the fire trench; the second infantry tank crossed over
the fascine of the first and made for the enemy’s support
trench, cast its fascine, and crossing did likewise. Meanwhile
the advance-guard tank had swung round, and crossing over
the fascines of the two infantry tanks, moved forward with
its own fascine still in position ready for the third trench
line. When the two infantry tanks met they assembled behind
the advance-guard tank and awaited orders. The leading wave of
infantry planted a red flag at the gaps in the wire.
“In training the infantry the following exercises were carried
out:--
(1) Assembly of infantry behind tanks.
(2) Advance to attack behind tanks.
(3) Passing through wire crushed down by tanks.
(4) Clearing up a trench sector under protection of tanks.
“To enable them to work quickly in section single files and
to form these into section lines a simple platoon drill was
issued, and it is interesting to note that this drill was based
on a very similar one described by Xenophon in his ‘Cyropædeia’
and attributed to King Cyrus (_circa_ 500 B.C.).”
The fascines above mentioned were designed to assist the tanks over the
wider trenches of the Hindenburg system. Some of these were known to
be 12 feet wide and of great depth, the actual width being increased
by the inward slopes of a parapet and parados 2 feet 6 inches high.
A Mark IV. tank could only cross a trench 10-11 feet wide, a fact of
which the Germans were well aware. The real obstacle was the depth of
the trench, as when the tank was halfway over, but not yet balanced
on the parados, the tail left the parapet and dropped to the trench
floor, shifting the centre of gravity and leaving the machine at an
angle so near the vertical that the tracks could not grip against all
the deadweight below. The object of the fascine, therefore, was not to
fill the trench and form a bridge, as seems commonly to be supposed,
for this was both impossible and unnecessary, but to keep the tail of
the tank from dropping so far that the machine was unable to recover.
These tank fascines were made by binding together with chains, under
great pressure, seventy-five ordinary brushwood bundles 10 feet long.
Each big fascine was 4 feet 6 inches in diameter and weighed a ton and
three-quarters. This monstrosity was carried on the cab of the tank,
and was dropped into a trench over the nose by means of a release
mechanism from within. It was an abomination to man-handle, fifteen to
twenty Chinamen being required to push each fascine through the mud
at Erin; and during a train journey it had to be lowered on the truck
and hoisted up again before detrainment. But in action the fascines
fulfilled their purpose admirably. The widest and deepest Hindenburg
trenches proved no obstacle at all.
Four hundred of these fascines were made at Central Workshops during
the feverish three weeks before Cambrai. This involved the trimming
to the correct length of 30,000 ordinary fascines, and the welding of
2000 fathoms of steel chain. Eighteen tanks, working in pairs, pulled
on the chains in opposite directions after they had been wound several
times round the huge bundles. In the same period were constructed 110
heavy timber sledges, to be towed by tanks with loads of petrol and
ammunition. 127 tanks were repaired and issued, and a number were
fitted with large grapnels for wire-clearing. Owing to the necessity of
secrecy, the personnel at Erin were not informed of the extreme urgency
of these tasks; yet during these three weeks the shops were working
for 22¹⁄₂ hours out of every 24 without a break. Nor was this pressure
confined to the workshops. Between the 10th and 25th November, 28
lorries covered between them 19,000 miles, or 744 miles per lorry, and
some small box-cars averaged 1200 miles apiece.
Three main supply dumps were established at the lying-up points of the
three brigades--Havrincourt Wood, Dessart Wood, and Villers-Guislain
and Gouzeaucourt. Among the stores collected here were 165,000 gallons
of petrol, 55,000 lbs. of grease, 5,000,000 rounds of S.A.A., and
500,000 rounds of 6-pounder shell. The splendid system of light
railways behind the 3rd Army front alone made this huge accumulation
possible in so short a time. In the field, stores were to be carried
from these dumps by supply-tanks and gun-carrying tanks towing sledges.
This brief account will give some idea of the work required before
a full-dress tank battle, and of the sudden problems with which the
technical staff had to grapple at short notice. It must be remembered
that there was no precedent whatever for this operation. Four times as
many tanks as went in on the first day at Ypres were to be employed
at Cambrai. There had been little time for preparation and less for
reconnaissance. The Hindenburg trenches, until they were met and
conquered, at least were impressive impostors; and there was a great
weight of responsibility, as well as a sense of gratification, attached
to the fact that for the first time in the career of the corps, tanks
were to be the dominating factor in a big battle. Their method of use
determined the whole tactical scheme. Confident though all ranks might
be of gaining that triumph to which they had looked forward through a
series of discouragements, lasting over many months, the importance of
the occasion brought infinite anxiety and strain.
On the other hand, everything, at long last, had been done for them
that could be done. They were to have their own way on ground of their
own choosing. For over a week at Wailly tanks and infantry rehearsed
over the old German trenches the exact tactics they were to employ over
the new ones. To give the infantry additional confidence, they were
asked to construct their own defences and wire entanglements, which
the tanks then proceeded to obliterate. The deep German front line
at Wailly, enlarged to a veritable gulf by the passage or ditching
of innumerable tanks during previous months of training, was an
admirable model on which to prove the efficiency of the fascines. The
masses of rusty wire provided practice for the special machines whose
grapnels were to clear the way for the cavalry. Short though the time
was, nothing was left undone. Tank personnel and infantry practised
together and talked together, and for the first time was reached an
approximation to that mutual trust and understanding which these two
arms had so long and so especially required.
II.
An examination of a layered map shows very clearly the conformation
of the country between the Hindenburg Line and Cambrai. The 3rd
Army, lying south-west of that town, was attacking north-east. The
battlefield can be divided into two parts, north and south of a
line drawn westward from Marcoing through Flesquières along the
Flesquières-Havrincourt Ridge. The southern part is a triangle, bounded
to the north by this ridge, to the east by the Canal de L’Escaut, which
zigzags southward from Cambrai, and to the south-west by the Hindenburg
Line, which almost touches the canal near Banteux. In this part of
the field we should be fighting downhill to the canal valley. The
northern part, beyond the Flesquières Ridge, is lowish ground dominated
by one prominent landmark, Bourlon Hill and Wood, and delimited to
the west by the Canal du Nord, which the Hindenburg trenches crossed
immediately north of Havrincourt Wood, thence following its course
northward to Mœuvres. The Flesquières Ridge itself is an important
tactical feature, running from east to west against the general lie of
the country and overlooking the whole northern part of the battlefield;
and where it was crossed by the German line, west of Havrincourt, the
latter made a pronounced salient, taking in a portion of Havrincourt
Wood. This portion was held as an advanced position in front of the
trench system, and farther south the hamlet of La Vacquerie and other
posts were strongly occupied in a like manner. The Hindenburg Line
itself, taking it correctly as the first line of trenches, was sited on
reverse slopes, hidden from our observation, and covered in front by
a dense belt of wire, nowhere less than 50 yards deep. The Hindenburg
wire was, in fact, a remarkable sight. You saw it winding away over
the ridges in three broad belts, clean cut and separated by narrower
avenues of grass; miles upon miles of it, with great patches red with
rust after any rain, and looking in the distance where it climbed some
final crest to the horizon like zigzag stripes of plough or trimmed
and level vegetation. Behind the front system of trenches were three
others, the Hindenburg Reserve, wired almost as thickly as the first
line, and two more. These last were not so formidable. The series
varied in depth from three and a half to four and a half miles. The
front line and reserve were pierced in every bay by the shafts of deep
dug-outs, although some of these had not been finished. In places they
were joined up to form considerable tunnels, forty feet underground.
The chalk of which the higher land is formed, although hard to work,
is admirable for such subterranean use. The shafts and dug-outs were
timbered, walls and roof, and when, a year later, I lived in several of
them, were always dry. The whole system was knitted together by a maze
of communication trenches.
The third and fourth lines, which in fact formed one system called
variously the Marquion, Masnières, or Beaurevoir Line, crossed the
Canal de L’Escaut south of Cambrai and covered another important
tactical feature, the Niergnies-Seranvillers Ridge, east of the canal.
This ridge, like that of Flesquières, overlooked all the northern part
of the battlefield as far as Bourlon, making any attack on that height
from the south a matter of great difficulty. The Niergnies Ridge,
therefore, was to be carried if possible as soon as the canal crossings
had been seized, but this effort proved beyond our resources.
The infantry at the disposal of Sir Julien Byng for his main attack
amounted only to six divisions, with two cavalry divisions, and
upwards of 1000 guns, for a front of six miles from east of Gonnelieu
to a point north of Havrincourt Wood. Subsidiary attacks to secure
the flanks were to be carried as far as Bullecourt to the north, and
from Gonnelieu southward to Vendhuile. The whole operation, as we
have seen, was under a time limit of forty-eight hours, while the
Commander-in-Chief intended to call a halt before that period had
expired if sufficient progress was not made. The first twenty-four
hours was expected to show, one way or another, how much might be
expected. But one rather startling factor resulted from the inadequate
means to be employed. Every tank and infantryman in the six divisions
was to go forward at zero. There were no reserves other than local
ones; nothing was left for the second day--except the cavalry. The
Guards and one or two other divisions were within a few marches of the
battlefield, but not near enough to come up in time; nor were they
intended to be used. The plan, in fact, was stamped plainly with that
spirit of compromise due to ignorance and consequent mistrust of the
capabilities of tanks. It was not really believed that the latter could
do all that they claimed. Six divisions, therefore, were enough to risk
on the gamble. On the other hand, in case the unexpected should happen,
a most ambitious programme was drawn up, for which six divisions were
hopelessly inadequate. The last German positions, beyond the Canal de
L’Escaut, were to be carried in the first phase of the attack, after
which cavalry was to cross the canal, occupy Cambrai and villages to
the north and east, and move forward with its right on Valenciennes.
In the meantime, the 4th Corps, on the right, was to form a defensive
flank until the cavalry had cut the Valenciennes-Douai line nine or
ten miles north of Cambrai (an incredible supposition), when the corps
was to continue its advance in a north-easterly direction. The second
and third phases of the battle were in the hands of the 3rd Corps on
the left, whose business it was to capture Bourlon and Inchy-en-Artois
(on the Canal du Nord), and then, by crossing the Arras-Cambrai road
toward the marshes of the Sensée, to cut off the enemy’s troops in the
angle which that river formed with the Canal du Nord. All this, with
six divisions, reads like a dream, as in fact it was. Admitted that it
represents the utmost possible and includes all that optimistic phase
of “exploitation” which never throughout the war was reached in any
battle, it remains an astonishing proposition. For if it was possible,
three times six divisions would barely be enough to fill the enormously
extended line we should have won; while as in the actual attack the
infantry were found to be exhausted after an advance of four or five
miles, it is difficult to see how, in the same time, they could be
expected to cover ten or fifteen. Most extraordinary of all is the
almost supernatural rôle allotted to the cavalry. It takes one back to
the days of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, or to the triumphs of Murat.
This venerable fallacy about cavalry would be pathetic if it were not
so mischievous. For as an offensive weapon a man on a horse is an
anachronism in any modern battle fought in an enclosed and cultivated
country where everybody else is under cover. He cannot see his enemy,
but can himself be seen a mile away, and, what is more pertinent, can
be shot at that distance. He is tied to his horse, which he cannot
hide. Even the pursuit of a routed enemy, supposed to be his especial
_métier_, is governed now by conditions which render him useless. In
every rout of a disciplined army some stout fellows will always be
found as a rearguard, and two or three machine-guns can hold up a whole
brigade of cavalry among villages and hedgerows. No ten feet high
combination of man and beast, in short, has any chance whatever against
modern small arms. It cannot be expected, however, that this ever
will be admitted in an army controlled largely by influential cavalry
soldiers; and as at Cambrai the mounted troops, with few exceptions,
proved incapable even of arriving in time to attempt anything, the less
said about them the better.
A further serious handicap to General Byng lay in the fact that most
of his six divisions had come from the Salient, where they had been
strained to the uttermost and had suffered heavy casualties. Their
ranks were filled up with drafts who had no experience, while it had
been impossible in the short time available for more than a small
percentage to practice at Wailly with the tanks. But having enumerated
these various adverse considerations, there remains much that was
encouraging to be put against them. The divisions included some of the
best in the army. The 29th had won an almost fabulous reputation in
Gallipoli, although few of its original rank and file were left. The
6th was another formation with the traditions of regular service behind
it. The 51st Highland Territorial Division (with which G Battalion had
been associated in the Salient) had the distinction of coming second on
a German list of those units most feared by the enemy. Among the troops
taking part in the subsidiary attacks to the north, and likely to be
involved in the main battle if all went well, were the 3rd Division,
which headed the German list referred to, and the 40th London and
36th Ulster Divisions. On the right flank, where the 3rd Army linked
up with the French, a strong force of French infantry and cavalry was
put at our disposal. Then there was the known fact that the enemy’s
position, held by Von der Marwitz’s 2nd Army, had been much depleted of
troops, and especially of guns, while our own people must have gained
confidence from the marked efficiency of our preliminary arrangements.
Everything had gone well; every man, so far as was possible, knew what
he had to do. Tanks and guns were in position; and the Germans in their
deep trenches half a mile away, undisturbed by any breath of doubt or
rumour, still performed mechanically the routine duties of a quiet
sector, and reported that we were similarly employed.
[Illustration: _First Battle of Cambrai._]
The three Tank Brigades were disposed as follows: The 1st Brigade,
of D, E, and G Battalions, with 42 tanks apiece, lay hidden in the
western end of Havrincourt Wood, a large mass of timber of which the
Germans actually held the eastern extremity, 3000 yards away. Colonel
Hankey, of G Battalion, had under his command for the operation tanks
from both the other units, giving him a total of 60 machines. The 2nd
Brigade lay in Dessart Wood, two miles south of Havrincourt Wood. It
consisted for the time of only two Battalions, B and H, A Battalion
being attached to the 3rd Brigade. The tanks of the latter (A, C,
F, and I Battalions), having no convenient wood in which to hide,
were concealed under brick-coloured camouflage netting in and about
Gouzeaucourt and Villers-Guislain. The battalions of the 2nd and 3rd
Brigades had also 42 tanks apiece. Each unit set aside a small number
as a reserve to replace mechanical breakdowns. In addition to the whole
total of 378 fighting machines, there were 32 wire-clearing tanks with
grapnels to open passages for the guns and cavalry; 2 for carrying
bridging material; 1 with a telephone cable for the 3rd Army signals;
54 supply-tanks, some of them adapted gun-carriers; and 9 with wireless
apparatus.
The 1st Brigade, on the left, was operating with the 62nd and 51st
Divisions, its first objectives being Havrincourt village and
Flesquières, with subsequent exploitation toward Graincourt, Anneux,
Fontaine-Notre-Dame, and Bourlon.
The 2nd Brigade in the centre, leading the 6th Division, was to carry
the Blue and Brown lines and Ribécourt, thence making for Marcoing on
the Canal de L’Escaut and the Bois des Neufs further north.
The 3rd Brigade on the right, its 4 battalions working with the 29th,
20th, and 12th Divisions, had in hand the capture of La Vacquerie and
the Blue and Brown lines beyond, then the bulging line of the canal
from Marcoing to Masnières and the crossings at those places, and
finally Crèvecoeur on the east bank at the foot of the Niergnies ridge.
Zero was fixed for 6.20 A.M. on the 20th. After dusk on the previous
evening tank routes would be taped to the assembly positions. Before 6
o’clock all the tanks were to be ready in one long line from Trescault
to Gonnelieu, in front of our trenches and within 500-1000 yards of
the German outposts; the “advance-guard” tanks 150 yards ahead, and
the main body deployed at approximate intervals of 100 yards. At 6.10
the whole mass would begin to move forward, followed by infantry in
section columns. At zero, ten minutes later, a barrage of shrapnel,
H.E. and smoke shells from upwards of 1000 guns would fall on the
enemy’s outpost line, lifting after one minute, and moving forward in
jumps of 250 yards, but remaining on certain objectives for stated
periods. In addition, smoke-screens were to fall on the Flesquières
ridge and along the right flank of the 4th Corps, together with the
usual counter-battery work and bombardment of roads and bridges.
The weather had been fine, but so misty that little aeroplane
observation had been possible. This did not affect us, as motives of
secrecy had kept our aerial reconnaissance within the normal routine,
and it prevented awkward prying on the enemy’s part. On the night of
the 17th-18th November the Germans made a small raid near Havrincourt
Wood and captured a few prisoners. These men were carried to Army
Headquarters for investigation, a delay which had fortunate results for
us, for some information about the forthcoming attack eventually was
extracted from them. It came too late. A telegraphic warning reached
the German front line only a few minutes before zero on the 20th, and
was found half transcribed in a signaller’s dug-out.
III.
General Elles, on the evening of 19th November, issued his “Special
Order No. 6,” in which he said: “To-morrow the Tank Corps will have the
chance for which it has been waiting for many months--to operate on
good going in the van of battle.... I propose leading the attack of the
centre division.” Enough has been said by others about the better-known
newspaper version: “England expects every tank to do its damndest”--but
I cannot refrain from pointing out once more that this impudent lie was
only in accordance with all the traditions of modern journalism, which
knows neither scruples, education, nor good taste. Herodotus was in the
habit of putting imaginary speeches into the mouths of his historical
characters; but we have indeed sunk low when some illiterate scavenger
of Fleet Street is permitted, and even encouraged, to employ his own
characteristic phraseology for the same purpose in the columns of a
newspaper.
Before midnight that evening, from Havrincourt Wood and Dessart
Wood, from Gouzeaucourt and Villers-Guislain, scores of tanks had
uncamouflaged and moved out and were already on their way. It was such
a gathering of these singular machines as never had been seen before,
and was to be seen only once again--on 8th August of the following
year. Section after section, company after company (twenty-seven
companies were there, as against two on the Somme a year earlier),
they crawled forward in long columns that split up after a while
into smaller ones, and then again into twos and threes, until toward
five o’clock the whole were deploying into a single line six miles
long--a threatening, silent, curving line that faced and corresponded
to the larger salients and re-entrants of the Hindenburg trenches.
So silently had this approach been carried out that many of the
infantry, assembling behind the gaps in our own wire, heard no tanks
at all, and inquired with some anxiety if they had arrived. A few had
broken down, and were replaced at once from the mechanical reserve.
Upwards of 350 were in position. The night was very dark, with a
dense ground mist, but so complete were all arrangements that this
caused no inconvenience, while it helped to screen the massing of this
unparalleled armada. A sudden burst of shelling and trench-mortar
fire from the German lines about 4.30 startled every one and provoked
suspicions of a premature discovery, but it died away in half an
hour. From five o’clock until zero the whole front was quiet. At ten
minutes past six tanks and infantry began to move; and at 6.20, with
the sky lightening rapidly above the mist, the barrage exploded with
a shattering crash of sound along the German outpost line, some 250
yards in front of the “advance-guard” machines. In the centre of the
six-mile line, in a tank called the “Hilda” of H Battalion, General
Elles was leading into the most revolutionary battle of the war the
corps which had made it possible, and which he had controlled almost
from its infancy. It was not the ordinary post for the commander of a
large organisation, but this was not an ordinary occasion. It was the
consummation of two years of struggle and disappointment. There can
have been little doubt in his mind, or in that of any other man in the
350 tanks, as to what the result would be now that the adventure was
fairly launched.
The immediate onset of the tanks inevitably was overwhelming. The
German outposts, dazed or annihilated by the sudden deluge of shells,
were overrun in an instant. The triple belts of wire were crossed
as if they had been beds of nettles, and 350 pathways were sheared
through them for the infantry. The defenders of the front trench,
scrambling out of dug-outs and shelters to meet the crash and flame of
the barrage, saw the leading tanks almost upon them, their appearance
made the more grotesque and terrifying by the huge black bundles they
carried on their cabs. As these tanks swung left-handed and fired down
into the trench, others, also surmounted by these appalling objects,
appeared in multitudes behind them out of the mist. It is small wonder
that the front Hindenburg Line, that fabulous excavation which was to
be the bulwark of Germany, gave little trouble. The great fascines
were loosed and rolled over the parapet to the trench floor; and down
the whole line tanks were dipping and rearing up and clawing their way
across into the almost unravaged country beyond. The defenders of the
line were running panic-stricken, casting away arms and equipment. The
Hindenburg Reserve, with its own massive entanglements, went the way
of the first trenches; and so far our following infantry had found
little to do beyond firing on the fugitives and rounding up gangs of
half-stupefied prisoners. It was now broad day, the mist was thinning,
and everywhere from Havrincourt to Banteux on the canal was rout and
consternation. The Grand Ravin, a gully which runs from Havrincourt
to Marcoing, was choked with an unarmed mob streaming eastward. The
garrison of Havrincourt had put up a fight, but tanks closed on
it from the north, and it was cleared by the 62nd Division.[20] La
Vacquerie had gone in the first onset; and now Ribécourt was carried,
and tanks and infantry were approaching the vital canal bridges
at Marcoing and Masnières. Over the whole southern half of the
battlefield, the triangle I have described, the defence had collapsed;
and this area was virtually cleared by midday. Only at one or two
points had there been any serious resistance, the most notable being
Lateau Wood, on a hill-top overlooking the canal, where a number of
batteries were posted. Fighting continued here during most of the
morning, and included an encounter between a tank and a 5.9 howitzer,
in which the tank for once was the victor. The gun blew away the tank’s
right-hand sponson, but failed to injure the engine, and was overrun
before it could be reloaded. Eventually the wood was cleared and the
guns captured. By two o’clock Marcoing was in our hands, and all but
a portion of Masnières. At the former place a tank of A Battalion
arrived in time to drive off the German engineers who were in the act
of destroying the bridge, which was on the far side of the village.
At Masnières, however, the bridge was partially wrecked, and a tank
of F Battalion, endeavouring to cross, completed the destruction and
fell with the wreckage into the canal. This accident helped to delay
our advance at this point upon Rumilly and the Niergnies ridge. In the
meantime a hitch had occurred in the northern portion of the field.
The 51st Division, advancing against Flesquières, as soon as the
fall of Havrincourt and Ribécourt secured its flanks, had adopted a
formation of attack which does not seem to have combined successfully
with the tanks. The latter entered the village, but the infantry were
too far behind and were held up by machine-gun fire. Throughout the day
tanks were in and out of Flesquières, driving the Germans into cellars
from which they emerged again as the danger passed; but the 51st could
do no more than obtain a grip on the outskirts of the place. The
château, surrounded by a stout wall and impregnable to tanks, was the
centre of resistance. Night fell with the village still untaken.
Largely on account of the inability of the 51st to give adequate
support, the tanks had very serious losses in and about Flesquières. A
number of batteries lay just over the ridge, and tank after tank was
hit and disabled as it appeared on the crest, the easiest of targets at
almost point-blank range. One gun in the west end of the village itself
was believed to have knocked out no fewer than sixteen machines of D
and E Battalions. This was the celebrated piece served single-handed by
a very gallant German officer after all his men had abandoned him. He
was killed beside his gun in the end by the infantry. Had the latter
been able to support the tanks more closely, most of these mischievous
batteries could have been silenced before they had a chance of doing
any damage. A few riflemen pushed ahead would have driven off the
gunners while the tanks remained hidden by the crest. It is no part of
a tank’s duty to make itself a helpless target for field-guns. As it
was, while the wings of the army had swept on triumphantly to their
third objectives and beyond, an unfortunate check had occurred in the
centre. On the left of the 51st Division the 62nd, having cleared
Havrincourt with the help of G Battalion’s tanks, pushed on northward
over the narrow neck of the Flesquières ridge up the line of the Canal
du Nord. Some of our tanks were caught by the same batteries that were
holding up D and E. Muirhead, of 20 Company, was killed here, and five
or six machines were disabled. Chaddock, who had his section commander,
Fearnley, on board, had an extraordinary escape. A shell came through
the cab, took off the driver’s head, and flung it on the knees of
Fearnley at the brakes, killed or wounded the two right-hand gunners,
and passed out at the stern without exploding. But the majority of
the tanks were covered by a spur from the view of the batteries, and
elsewhere there was no stopping this combination of G and the 62nd.
Both the Hindenburg main and reserve lines were crossed in many places
without the use of fascines, and tanks and infantry rolled swiftly down
the slope to Graincourt, beyond which were the double row of trees
along the Route Nationale No. 29, the Bapaume-Cambrai road, and the
heavy mass of Bourlon Wood. Eight 6-pounder tanks advanced in line
direct upon Graincourt, firing every gun they could bring to bear. Two
German field-pieces concealed near the village were happily spotted
by Charles Baker from the dust thrown up by the blast of their first
discharge, and a few 6-pounder rounds drove away the gunners. By one
o’clock Graincourt was captured. Still pushing on, tanks and infantry
entered Anneux. This village was not wholly cleared that afternoon, for
the 62nd were now exhausted. They had made the biggest advance of any
division--4¹⁄₂ miles from their original front; but they would be the
first to acknowledge that the tanks alone had made this possible, and
had led them throughout. Some of G Battalion even had not finished yet.
They crossed the Bapaume-Cambrai road and entered Bourlon Wood. There
was little or no opposition: the great wood, which was to be the centre
of such desperate fighting during the next week, appeared to be empty
of defenders. It is certain that with a brigade of fresh infantry it
could have been occupied and consolidated that evening. “The possession
of Bourlon Ridge”--to quote Sir Douglas Haig’s despatch--“would enable
our troops to obtain observation over the ground to the north,
which sloped gently down to the Sensée river. The enemy’s defensive
lines south of the Scarpe and Sensée rivers would thereby be turned,
his communications exposed to the observed fire of our artillery, and
his positions in this section jeopardised. In short, so great was the
importance of the ridge to the enemy that its loss would probably cause
the abandonment by the Germans of their carefully-prepared defence
systems for a considerable distance to the north of it.” Bourlon Wood
itself, at the southern end of the ridge, was also on the highest part,
and dominated the remainder. We could have captured it with ease on the
evening of the 20th, and continued the advance next day, but there was
no infantry capable of this final effort. The tanks unsupported could
not penetrate far into the gloomy wood, still less attempt to hold it;
and after a while they withdrew.
[Illustration: Battle of Cambrai. Bourlon Wood and Village, with
Bapaume-Cambrai road in front.]
The first day’s battle, in fact, was now at an end. It was after
four o’clock, and the November twilight was falling. In the eastern
outskirts of Anneux and Masnières, our furthest points of penetration,
street-fighting was still in progress; and at Flesquières, far behind,
the stubborn garrison continued to resist, although almost completely
surrounded; but all around this isolated conflict the routine tasks
of consolidation and clearance and preparation for the morrow were
already in full swing. The meagre infantry reserves--some three or
four brigades,--masses of belated cavalry and endless columns of guns,
were pushing forward through the dusk; and everywhere the tanks were
rolling home to their rallying-points. Except for the unfortunate check
at Flesquières, the day had been one series of startling triumphs. In
ten hours three defence systems, believed to be all but impregnable,
had fallen like things of buckram: an area of ground as large as the
whole Ypres salient, containing a dozen villages and hamlets, had
been overrun; and 7000 or 8000 prisoners, with upwards of 100 guns,
already were in our hands. Great masses of material had been captured;
quartermasters’ stores, field post-offices, canteens, cinema theatres,
hospitals--all these were among the miscellaneous acquisitions of that
day. The surprise had been overwhelmingly complete, and the German
infantry, with few exceptions, had been routed with an ease that had
no precedent in the war, because the correct use of the determining
factor had no precedent either. The panic spread far to the rear, for
in Cambrai and beyond all was confusion and dismay.
These great results had been gained at a relatively trifling cost to
ourselves; and it is impossible to reflect upon this beginning without
deploring the inadequate resources which caused it, in the end, to
remain no more than a brilliant but disappointing fragment. There is
no need, however, to go into this subject again. We have seen already
that there were no fresh reserves available, or none to speak of. Sir
Julien Byng had in hand a few brigades of infantry, tired but hitherto
not engaged, a couple of hundred tanks, whose stipulated work was more
than accomplished, and whose crews and supplies alike were exhausted,
and an entire cavalry corps which practically had done nothing at all.
There should also perhaps be included the French troops on his right,
and the divisions engaged in the subsidiary attack at Bullecourt, which
had been highly successful; but none of these were in a position to
reinforce him to a degree comparable to his opportunities. With another
three or four divisions, instead of three or four brigades, behind
his main battle front, there would have been some chance even of the
optimistic schemes of exploitation being realised without any miracles
by the cavalry. There were still thirty-six hours before the enemy
could hope to collect his own reinforcements.
What, in the meantime, of the cavalry, who were to be galloping for the
Sensée? The great proportion of these troops, whose talk (in Amiens or
Boulogne) was always of speed and dash and initiative, and for whose
benefit, that these qualities might be utilised, the special tanks had
cleared wide passages in the wire, had arrived upon the field four
hours late. Any one who has seen cavalry on the march trying to find
their way anywhere by the use of a map will understand readily how
this occurred; and it is probable that these laggards, even in such a
_débâcle_, would very soon have ceased to be of use as mounted troops;
but they could have fought very usefully on foot, as they were forced
to do when they did arrive. One small unit, a squadron of the Canadian
Fort Garry Horse, less pedantic or more skilled in map-reading than its
regular colleagues, pushed early to the front, managed to cross the
Canal de L’Escaut by an extemporised bridge, rushed the half-finished
Beaurevoir-Masnières line on the slope beyond, and dispersed some
infantry and captured a battery behind it. This quite exceptional
feat may be held to prove that cavalry are still the great winners of
battles that they were in the time of Turenne. It remains, however, an
isolated performance; and the Canadians in the end met their inevitable
fate. All their horses were killed or wounded, and they were reduced to
fighting, like any infantrymen, behind the bank of a sunken road. Their
gallantry, skill, and good fortune only served to emphasise the case of
the numerous regular regiments who were unable to achieve anything at
all.
It is necessary to descend now from the sublime to the ridiculous, and
to consider briefly the condition of the nine tank battalions at the
end of this first day’s fighting, to the success of which they had
mainly contributed. “By 4 P.M. on the 20th November,” to quote ‘Weekly
Tank Notes,’ “one of the most astonishing battles in all history had
been won, and as far as the Tank Corps was concerned, tactically
finished, for no reserves existing, it was not possible to do more than
rally the now very weary and exhausted crews, select the fittest, and
patch up composite companies to continue the attack on the morrow.”
I have pointed out before the actual physical exhaustion, due to
extreme heat, cramped quarters, jolting, and other causes, entailed
in any prolonged operation in a tank. Of the machines which rallied
on the evening of November 20th nearly all had been running for at
least sixteen hours. Some had covered distances undreamt of in any
previous tank action. All were out of petrol, water, and ammunition,
and many had mechanical troubles that needed attention. The crews
to a man were dog-tired, but before they could think of rest every
remediable want had to be satisfied. Petrol and water tanks must be
refilled, expended ammunition replaced, and minor repairs effected.
For the brigade and battalion staffs there was the task of calculating
losses and effectives, and of arranging for the formation of composite
companies for the continuation of the battle next day. There was not an
additional man or tank to be had: all had been in action; and, as the
quotation above points out, the battle of Cambrai tactically was at an
end for the Tank Corps. It had done all and more than it had promised
to do, but there remained the necessity of continuing to help the no
less exhausted infantry to round off, if possible, the first day’s
victory. The losses in personnel had been considerable, and in tanks,
from various causes, very serious. The 1st Brigade alone had nearly 40
tanks hit and disabled, mostly on the Flesquières ridge. It is doubtful
if half of the original 378 fighting machines were now available, and
for immediate use the proportion was far smaller. Nevertheless, early
on the morning of the 21st, detachments from all three brigades were
in action again. On the right, tanks of F Battalion moved out from
Marcoing against the Beaurevoir-Masnières line, but the infantry, a
fresh brigade unaccustomed to tanks, failed to co-operate, and the
attack was a failure. Twenty-five tanks of B and H Battalions of the
2nd Brigade, with infantry of the 51st Division, rushed Cantaing,
Noyelles, and Fontaine-Notre-Dame. Cantaing was carried by tanks alone,
and handed over to the infantry by noon. Fontaine, which is virtually
an outlying suburb of Cambrai, was occupied after severe fighting
later in the day. In the meantime detachments from D and G completed
the capture of Anneux, and carried a trench line to the north of it.
Tanks once more pushed up the grass drives in Bourlon Wood, and once
more had to return through lack of support. The wood was now occupied
in force by the enemy, and was full of machine-guns. With the close
of the day the original time limit of forty-eight hours expired; but
the Commander-in-Chief, for reasons which he explains in his despatch,
decided to allow the operation to continue. Great progress had been
made, the enemy was badly shaken, and the situation in Italy, where
the disaster of Caporetto had occurred, required further efforts to
pin down the German reserves. Some additional divisions, including
the Guards and two detailed for the Italian front, were at this late
hour given to General Byng, and he was ordered to proceed with the
attack. The 22nd, therefore, was spent mostly in reorganisation, and
in preparing for a renewal of the battle. This involved a reshuffling
of tank units among others. The centre of interest having shifted to
Bourlon Ridge and its neighbourhood, the 3rd Tank Brigade was attached
to the 3rd Corps, and proceeded to trek northward from Villers-Plouich,
where all available tanks had concentrated. Further evidence of the
importance of the northern area was forthcoming in the afternoon, when
the Germans, whose own reserves were coming up, drove the 51st Division
out of Fontaine-Notre-Dame. Nearly 60 tanks of the 1st and 2nd Brigades
were collected for the attack on the 23rd. A furious struggle took
place in Fontaine, lasting throughout the day. Eight times the tanks
of the 2nd Brigade pushed through the village under an intense hail of
bullets and grenades from the upper stories of the houses. As soon as
they withdrew, the infantry, who had followed, were driven out again,
and at length were unable to give any support at all. Field-guns had
been brought into the village, and 11 tanks were hit and left there
when the assault finally was abandoned. The 1st Brigade, however,
admirably followed by the 40th Division, succeeded at last in clearing
Bourlon Wood and village, in spite of the fact that G Battalion’s
tanks were delayed till noon by bad traffic control holding up their
supplies. There was very severe fighting in the wood and village, the
tanks expending every round of 6-pdr. shell and most of their S.A.A.
The village itself could not be held, but the great wood remained in
our possession. Further to the west, about Mœuvres, on the Canal du
Nord, progress was also made.
The Tank Corps was now fought virtually to a standstill. Rest and
recuperation were imperative for officers, men, and machines, or for
what was left. “On the 25th and 27th November further attacks were
made by tanks and infantry on Bourlon and Fontaine-Notre-Dame with
varying successes, but eventually both these villages remained in the
hands of the enemy. During the attacks which had taken place since the
21st November, tank units had become terribly disorganised, and by
the 27th had been reduced to such a state of exhaustion that it was
determined to withdraw the 1st and 2nd Brigades. This withdrawal was
nearing completion when the great German counter-attack was launched
early on the morning of the 30th November.... It is an interesting
point to remember that in this battle the attacking infantry were
assisted by 690 officers and 3500 other ranks of the Tank Corps, a
little over 4000 men or the strength of a strong brigade, and that
these men replaced artillery wire-cutting, and rendered unnecessary
the old preliminary bombardment. More than this, by keeping close to
the infantry they effected a much higher co-operation than had ever
before been attainable with artillery. When on the 21st November the
bells of London pealed forth in celebration of the victory of Cambrai,
consciously or unconsciously to their listeners they tolled out an old
tactics and rang in a new--Cambrai had become the Valmy of a new epoch
in war, the epoch of the mechanical engineer.”[21]
[Illustration: Disabled Tank in Fontaine-Notre-Dame, November 1917.
(German Photo.)]
[Illustration: G Battalion Tanks at the Shooting-Box, Bourlon Wood,
November 1917.
(German Photo.)]
IV.
On 30th November, as everybody knows, the Germans launched two
tremendous attacks on the north and south-east flanks of the pronounced
salient which we now held in front of Cambrai. On the north, from
Bourlon to Mœuvres, where the main blow was delivered, it ended in a
sanguinary repulse. Far away to the south at Gouzeaucourt, however,
where the line was very attenuated in consequence of our preoccupation
with the Bourlon area, a very serious breakdown occurred. Assisted
by a great number of low-flying aeroplanes and preceded by a short
but intense bombardment, the attack for a time carried everything
before it. Villers-Guislain and Gonnelieu were carried at the first
rush, and by 9 A.M. Gouzeaucourt itself, the Headquarters of the 29th
Division, was captured. It was a repetition on a smaller scale of our
surprise ten days before. Hospitals, stores, and dumps of every kind
of material, together with a great number of guns, were lost in the
first three or four hours, and the roads westward were choked with
stragglers and escaping transport. The nearest Tank Brigade to the
danger point was the 2nd, concentrated about Fins railhead. A Battalion
had rejoined, and the whole brigade was preparing to entrain for
Plateau station and the winter quarters at Bray. Rumours of the attack
arrived early, but it was not until 9.55 that a telephone message came
through from the 3rd Corps. Although all the machines were more or less
dismantled and totally unfit for action, within three hours 36 from A
and B Battalions were moving toward Gouzeaucourt, followed two hours
later by a reserve of 20 from H Battalion. The Guards having recaptured
Gouzeaucourt, the tanks patrolled beyond as a screen. On the following
morning a composite detachment from A and B helped the dismounted
troopers of the 5th Cavalry Division to clear Gauche Wood, but attempts
on Villers-Guislain and Gonnelieu--the latter by the Guards and tanks
from H Battalion--were eventually held up. The tanks, however, did
tremendous execution among the enemy, who was in great force, and this
spirited rejoinder stopped effectively any further attempts by the
Germans to advance. The rapidity with which these tank counter-attacks
were organised and carried out with stripped and unready machines,
and in circumstances of peculiar difficulty, was in itself highly
creditable. It provided also decisive evidence on a point hitherto
doubted by sceptics--the value of tanks in such an emergency.
As a result of the German surprise, the Cambrai Salient was contracted
and Bourlon Wood abandoned. There was no further fighting for the Tank
Corps. The 1st Brigade remained for a dreary fortnight in a defensive
position at Dessart Wood, passing the nights in towing heavy guns back
from Villers-Plouich. The other two brigades had withdrawn to Bray, and
the 1st followed to Meaulte in the latter half of December.
NOTE.--Two authoritative German comments on the battle of
Cambrai show how fully the enemy realised that he had been
saved from a great disaster by our lack of faith in tanks.
Hindenburg, in his ‘Memoirs,’ writes as follows: “By neglecting
to exploit a brilliant initial success they had let victory
be snatched from them, and indeed by troops which were far
inferior to their own both in numbers and quality.... Moreover,
his High Command seemed to have failed to concentrate the
resources required to secure the execution of their plans
and their exploitation in case of success. Strong bodies of
cavalry assembled behind the triumphant leading infantry
divisions failed, even on this occasion, to overcome the last
line of resistance, weak though it was, which barred the way
to the flank and rear of their opponents. The English cavalry
squadrons were not able to conquer the German defence, even
with the help of their tanks, and proved unequal to decorating
their standards with that victory for which they had striven so
honourably and so often.”
General Otto von Moser, commanding the 14th Reserve Corps
during the battle, points out that the British “failed because
they luckily had not the dozen or two dozen divisions at hand
to exploit the undeniable success of the 20th November.”
CHAPTER XIV.
MISCELLANEOUS. THE GERMANS AND THE TANK: THE FRENCH ARTILLERIE D’ASSAUT.
I.
The battle of Cambrai having converted not only ourselves but also
the enemy to a belief in the tactical and moral value of the new arm,
it will be convenient at this point to deal with the German attitude
toward tanks and the measures adopted to cope with the latter.
It often is assumed that the German conversion was yet more grudging
than our own; that until Cambrai they refused to admit that tanks had
any value whatever; and that even after that battle they remained for
some time very sceptical about the new doctrines. But I think these are
only half-truths. I think the Germans realised far sooner than we did
the moral influence of the attack by armour, while failing perhaps to
appreciate until it was too late the complete tactical revolution it
was bringing about. In the end they became more bigoted converts than
any British soldier outside the Tank Corps itself. I spent six months
with the Army of Occupation in Cologne, and I found everywhere the same
bitter feelings about tanks. “Deutsches’ Tod” they were called--the
Death of Germany. In private conversation, as well as in public print,
they were coupled with the blockade as one of the two chief factors in
the downfall of the country. With that extraordinary but quite sincere
inability to understand any point of view but their own, the authors
of the Belgian atrocities, the inventors of chlorine gas, the first
people to poison wells, one and all are inclined to regard the use of
tanks as a brutal and unjustifiable measure, worthy only of savages. A
nation so illogical should be capable, through sheer thick-headedness,
of going very far.
The early appreciation by the Germans of the moral effect of tanks is
manifest in their repeated efforts to belittle them. The brave Michael
was always being assured in published orders that these machines were
worse than useless. “The infantry must not let itself be frightened
by tanks. The fighting capacity of the tank is small owing to the
bad visibility, and the shooting powers of the machine-guns and guns
cramped and inaccurate as the result of the motion. It has been proved
that tank crews are nervous and are inclined to turn back or leave the
tank.... The hostile infantry follows tanks only half-heartedly....”
(Order issued to the 7th Cavalry Division, 26th September 1917.) The
Mark II. tanks captured at Arras, and the Mark IV.’s left behind
after the Cambrai withdrawal, were used to demonstrate the inherent
weaknesses of the invention and the extreme discomfort endured by the
crews. It was found, however, that with all this the Higher Command
was unable to infect the German soldier with its own lofty contempt
for tanks. The brave Michael persisted in his delusions, and was so
wrong-headed even as to ask why the enemy was allowed a monopoly of
these engines of war. It must be remembered that by the autumn of 1917
the French St Chamond and Schneider machines had been used in some
numbers and with considerable success in Champagne, so that the German
infantryman saw himself threatened everywhere by the new weapon; and
he knew perfectly well that as an individual he was entirely helpless
against it, whatever might be the general outcome of a battle in which
it was employed. He could not acquire the detached outlook of the
Great General Staff at Spa. And it was in consequence of this feeling
in the subordinate ranks that, before the battle of Cambrai, the
Great General Staff stultified all its own published convictions by
authorising the construction of German tanks. There can be no doubt
that this measure, half-hearted as it was, arose out of some sort of
pressure from below. The Higher Command was still unconvinced, but it
was necessary for the encouragement of the less intelligent to make
a pretence of conversion. A good deal of talk, a little work, and
the eventual appearance of a few German tanks behind the line would
counteract these mischievous apprehensions--or so it was hoped.
The German Tank Corps bore all the marks of an indifferent, if not
inimical parentage. In the beginning it was quite a small affair, and
any subsequent attempts to enlarge it to adequate proportions came too
late or were hampered by lack of means. An official German document
states that only 15 machines were ever completed. Ten more apparently
were under order in the autumn of 1918, by which date 25 captured
British Mark IV. tanks had also been included in the new unit. The
total of effectives (40) was divided into eight sections--or, as the
Germans happily named them, _Sturmpanzerkraftwagenabteilungen_. (One
would think this mouthful alone sufficient to deter recruits.) There
were three sections of German tanks and five of British, each section
consisting of five machines. An M.T. Testing Company stationed near
Berlin instructed the crews and tested all tanks before issue.
The original German _Panzerkraftwagen_ was a clumsy machine, based, it
is said, on stolen drawings of the French St Chamond type. It weighed
approximately 40 tons, was 24 feet long, 11 feet high, and 10 feet 6
inches wide. On good ground it could travel for a short distance at a
speed of 8-10 miles an hour. It was propelled by two 100-h.p. German
Daimler engines, each driving a single track, which permitted of a
one-man control, as in our Mark V.’s. The interior was divided into
front and rear compartments joined by narrow gangways on either side
of the central engine casing. In front were one 5.7 cm. Q.F. gun
(equivalent to our 6-pounder) and two heavy machine-guns, and in the
rear four more machine-guns. The crew consisted of an officer and no
fewer than fifteen or sixteen men, who must have crowded the narrow
quarters intolerably; and as three branches of the service--artillery,
infantry, and technical--were represented, each ignorant of the other’s
duties, there was much friction between them. The tank was heavily
armoured, especially in front, where the plating was 1³⁄₁₆ inches
in thickness, and would keep out common shell from a field-gun at a
moderate range; but the roof was very thin, and the whole machine was
so roughly put together that wide crevices around the gun-ports made
it unpleasantly vulnerable to the splash from machine-gun bullets.
There was room in places for the bullets themselves to enter. Being
built on the ordinary tractor principle, with a very low clearance
from the ground and a long flat tread, the tank could neither cross a
considerable trench nor surmount any serious obstacle. There was no
unditching apparatus. The only improvement on our design was the sprung
track, which reduced wear and shock, and in so ponderous a machine was
a notable innovation. Observation was exceptionally bad. The officer
and driver sat above the engine, their heads and shoulders in a central
cab which rose two feet above the roof, and as the latter projected
forward for ten feet, it hid from them all the ground immediately in
front.
In every respect, in fact, excepting the sprung tracks, the
_Panzerkraftwagen_ was clumsy and inefficient to a degree.
Notwithstanding its one-man control, the officers of the new unit
preferred to handle the British Mark IV.’s, even during trials on level
ground; and for all practical purposes there was no comparison between
the two in general utility and handiness. And while the machine itself
was mistrusted, and with justice, another and unforeseen difficulty
was soon apparent. The higher command had talked more cleverly than it
knew. It had belittled all tanks so persistently, had made so strong an
argument out of the perils and discomforts of all tank warfare, that
the brave Michael, now that he had his own engine of destruction,
showed no enthusiasm for using it. The German tank crews, in fact, were
thoroughly afraid of their Frankensteins; and their rare appearances
in action were marked almost uniformly by that discretion which seemed
naturally to them by far the better part of valour. In some cases they
ditched their machines deliberately before any further harm could
overtake them. Only at Villers-Bretonneux did the German-made tanks
achieve any success--the counter-attack at Niergnies six months later
was carried out by captured British Mark IV.’s.
[Illustration: German Tank, “Adalbert.” (German Photo.)]
[Illustration: French Heavy Schneider Tank, carrying 7.5 field-gun.
(German Photo.)]
II.
German anti-tank measures in the early days followed obvious lines,
such as the use of armour-piercing bullets and direct field-artillery
fire. There was also employed on a few occasions a 1-pounder
automatic gun of the “Pom-pom” type. One of these weapons was found
in Kitchener’s Wood, in the Salient. It is possible that the wider
Hindenburg trenches were constructed with a view to discomfiting tanks.
The battle of Cambrai, however, besides demonstrating what tanks could
accomplish in a general way, given good conditions, demolished also the
Hindenburg fetish, and the shock of this discovery produced a crop of
reports and suggestions on the subject. Units were asked for statements
as to their experiences in the battle. One division (believed to be the
119th, holding the Fontaine-Notre-Dame sector from the 23rd November
onwards) reported as follows:--
“The division came into the Cambrai battle on the 22nd
November, and since that date has fought on several occasions,
and always successfully, against British tanks. Its experiences
are borne out by the statements of several British tank crews,
including the captain of a company of tanks.”
These prisoners, by the way, appear to have been unnecessarily
communicative. The report, after describing the method of attack and
the size and armament of tanks, continues:--
“German defence and defensive measures were weak. Losses on
both sides scarcely worth mentioning.... Pace (of tanks)
three or four miles per hour. They may surmount practically
all obstacles. One tank in Fontaine climbed up a steep
orchard, broke the trees, crossed two well-built 5-foot high
garden-walls, and, in turning, knocked down the corner of a
house.... Serious obstacles are constituted by trenches at
least 13-16 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Also by marshy ground.
Ploughed land is easily negotiated; also barricades. _The
building of obstacles does not pay. It is better to attack
tanks energetically_.... Tanks must be heavily fired at (by
artillery) during their advance, even if there is no likelihood
of hitting them. The main thing is to prevent the infantry from
following the tanks. The infantry must be made to fear the area
where the tanks are. In point of fact, the British infantry was
soon one to two miles behind the tanks, and at Fontaine did not
follow them at all.”
This is an interesting confirmation of a point already referred to. The
report goes on to remark that--
“... as actual anti-tank defence, only special guns situated
in the forward zone, which put the tanks out of action by fire
over open sights, are suitable. Each direct hit kills part of
the crew, and often sets the tank on fire. Detachments situated
further to the rear have no knowledge of the situation, and
often arrive too late.
“Such guns must, on principle, be situated well forward; then
the enemy will not succeed in a surprise attack.
“The O. i/c Defence Troops must be made responsible for the
siting of the anti-tank guns.
“Guns mounted on lorries do excellent work if the roads are
good.
“_Infantry._ The front line must only make a gap to let through
tanks not put out of action, and take cover; they must not
retire. Tanks must be dealt with _behind_ the front. The chief
object is the _repulse of the enemy infantry_. The tank captain
said, ‘_Tanks can gain ground, but can never hold it alone._’
This is a great point to remember when discussing them.
“Isolated commands in rear should be detailed for anti-tank
defence.
“_Means of Defence._ The chief one is the armour-piercing
bullet. It is feared by the tank crews because it goes clean
through the armour-plating, causing a long flame, and often
setting fire to the petrol-tank.
“The tank is best attacked from the rear. House-to-house
fighting against tanks is very favourable to infantry. The men
take cover in the houses, let the tank pass, and then fire at
it from the rear at close range with rifles and M.G.’s.
“The 46th I.R. accounted for four tanks in Fontaine in this way.
“_Hand Grenades._ Are useless singly; they only have effect if
several are tied together and thrown under the tank, but this
is very difficult.
“_T.M.’s._ Light T.M.’s can be made effective with flat
trajectory fire. Used singly they have good results.
“Anti-tank defence must be discussed and practised, when the
tanks lose their terror. Men fought for four hours violently
against eight tanks which penetrated into Fontaine, and of
which only two were able to return (four were accounted for by
infantry and two by artillery); moreover, eleven derelict tanks
are lying just outside our lines.
“MULLER-LOEBNITZ, Maj.,
for C.G.S.”[22]
It will be seen that the Germans continued to magnify the powers of
the armour-piercing bullets--a curious error, as the captured tanks
must have shown its comparative inefficacy against the plating on the
Mark IV.’s. Probably the captured personnel exaggerated the effect of
splinters and the ordinary bullet-splash round the gun-ports. It is
interesting also to note the remarks about the petrol-tank. This was
always considered by the enemy to be the tank’s weak spot, although in
fact no more vulnerable in itself than any other.
Soon after Cambrai the Germans were devoting their whole energies to
preparations for their own great offensive, which was launched in the
following spring, and defensive measures of all kinds were secondary
considerations for the time being. But when the three successive blows
on the Somme, the Lys, and the Aisne had come at length to an end, and
were countered, with startling rapidity and effect, by the French and
British attacks on 18th July and 8th August 1918, the enemy was aroused
very roughly to a realisation of his peril and of the power of the
weapon he had affected to despise. The 8th August, in particular, was
entirely a tank victory--a greater and more brilliant Cambrai; and the
astonishing collapse of the defence threw the Great General Staff into
a panic from which it never was allowed to recover. From this date to
the end a persistent refrain, rising at length to a frantic crescendo
of warning and exhortation, runs through all the orders issued to the
German armies, and the burden of it is tanks, tanks, and again tanks.
A few extracts, taken at random, from captured German orders,
prisoners’ statements, and similar channels of information, will show
very clearly the disillusionment and alarm which spread through the
armies after the rout of Von Hutier and Von der Marwitz in front of
Amiens. During the Arras operations at the end of August, for example,
documents were secured which showed that divisional anti-tank officers
had been created. A similar regimental appointment was recommended.
The divisional anti-tank officer was not to be employed for any other
purpose, and was to be given the utmost assistance by all ranks and
units. Further, a G.H.Q. Routine Order laid down that officers and
other ranks who had done good work in repelling tanks were to be
mentioned in Army Orders, and that specially meritorious acts were to
be rewarded by decorations. About the same time an order was issued
from the headquarters of the Crown Prince’s group of armies which ran
as follows:--
“According to reports received from G.H.Q. during the recent
fighting on the Second and Eighteenth Army fronts, large
numbers of tanks broke through on narrow fronts, and, pushing
straight forward, immediately attacked the battery positions
and headquarters of divisions. In many places no defence could
be made in time owing to the fact that batteries which had
their guns dug in were insufficiently mobile and were only
ready to open fire too late to defend themselves against the
tanks, which attacked them from all sides. Anti-tank defence
must be developed on the lines of those experiences.”[23]
Among prisoners’ statements, again, we find that various N.C.O.’s all
agreed that “tanks always create a moral effect on infantry, however
often they have seen tanks, or have been told by officers that they
will be quite safe if they take cover and let the tanks pass on. _It is
recognised that infantry can do nothing against tanks._”[24] On 25th
August the 38th German Division was adjured to pull itself together
and show a better front to tank attacks. “The troops themselves
will await a tank attack with calmness. The first essential for the
infantry is that they should keep their heads.” A month later we find
General Von Wrisberg endeavouring to encourage the civilians at home.
Speaking for the Minister of War in the Reichstag, he remarked, “the
American armies also should not terrify us. We shall also settle
with them. More momentous for us is the question of tanks. We are
adequately armed against them. Anti-tank defence is nowadays more a
question of nerves than of material.” Soon after General Von Wrisberg
had spoken, the second battle of Cambrai began. The tanks once more
proved too much for the nerves of the German infantry, and prisoners
provided the usual illuminating confirmation of this. It appeared that
in spite of all exhortations “the German infantry still considers
that as soon as the tanks have broken through their line, further
resistance is useless.... The officers gave as their opinion that
tanks were a ‘brilliant invention,’ and wished that the Germans had
more of them. Lack of material, however, stood in the way.... A number
of intelligent N.C.O.’s (Sergeant-Majors and Sergeants) ... stated
that tanks invariably had a considerable moral effect on infantry,
however often they might be told that they had only to let them through
and the artillery would deal with them.”[25] In the same month a
German Corps Order lays down that “_Messages concerning tanks have
preference over all other telephone calls, including messages regarding
aeroplanes._”[26]
For some time past Ludendorff had been growing more and more concerned
over this new warfare. In a report on the battle of 8th August, he
gave as the first reason for the defeat, “the fact that the troops
were surprised by the massed attack of tanks, and lost their heads
when the tanks suddenly appeared behind them under cover of natural
and artificial fog.” This, of course, was no more than the truth; but
it was a novel confession for the Great General Staff to make, and
indicated the grave apprehensions which the disaster had aroused, for
there could be no guarantee against the troops losing their heads a
second time, or a third. “Nerves” play an increasing part in official
German cajolings and extenuations from now to the end, but this
obnoxious and unsoldier-like word was never used before the tanks
caused it to become a normal feature in every apologia. Ludendorff,
once awake to the new danger, took vigorous although quite useless
steps to combat it by practical measures in the field. These we
will consider next, but before concluding this sketchy selection of
documentary evidence, one final and authoritative witness remains to be
heard--the Great General Staff itself. A short time ago, Colonel Bauer,
who had been head of the Artillery Department at headquarters, and
who is credited by German public opinion with having been the special
confidant and political inspirer of Ludendorff, issued a pamphlet
professing to give the General Staff’s version of the events which led
up to the Armistice. Throughout September and October, it appears,
Ludendorff made repeated demands for peace while the armies were still
intact, pointing out that it was necessary to reckon on an increasing
deterioration of the military situation. At the end of September Von
Hindenburg agreed to lay before the new Government just formed under
Prince Max of Baden a true statement of affairs. On 2nd October the
representatives from General Headquarters met the party leaders of
the Reichstag, and presented to them the report. It began with this
striking passage:--
“The chief army command has been compelled to take a terribly
grave decision, and declare that, according to human
probabilities, there is no longer any prospect of forcing
peace on the enemy. Above all, two facts have been decisive
for this issue. First, the tanks. The enemy has employed them
in unexpectedly large numbers. Where, after a very liberal
clouding of our positions with artificial mist, they effected
a surprise, our men’s nerves were often unequal to them.
Here they broke through our first line, opened a way for
their infantry, appeared in the rear, created local panics,
and threw the control of the fighting into confusion. When
they had once been identified our tank defence weapons and
our artillery quickly settled with them. Then, however, the
misfortune had already happened, and solely the successes of
the tanks explain the large numbers of prisoners which so
painfully reduced our strengths, and brought about a more rapid
consumption of reserves than we had hitherto been accustomed to.
“We were not in a position to oppose to the enemy equal masses
of German tanks. Their construction would have exceeded
the resources of our industry, which was strained to the
uttermost, or other more important things would have had to be
neglected.”--‘Daily Telegraph,’ 21st July 1919.[27]