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The Tank in Action During the First World War

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The Tank in Action During the First World War
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Author(s): D. G. Browne
Date Published: 2009/09
Page Count: 528
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-775-2
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-776-9

This is a very substantial and important book.

Quite simply, anyone interested in the history of tank warfare should read and own it for it is essential. It was written by a British tank commander of the Great War who has given us a comprehensive account of tanks as machines and tanks at war. First, it is an account of the creation and development of the tank. Second, it describes the war of the tank in all its theatres of operation including the Western Front, the Middle East and including the French and German forces. Third, it provides an insight into armaments, armour, maintenance, breakdown and battle damage recovery and into many aspects of keeping an early armoured squadron operational. Fourth, it offers an excellent history of the engagements of British tanks and, finally, it is a brilliant eyewitness account of the tank of the Great War in action—from one who was personally involved—including much battle description, dialogue and anecdotal incident. A successful book in every way.

The eventual establishment for a battalion was fixed at three companies of twelve tanks each, and a Workshops Company; making a total of thirty-six tanks, and some 800 officers and men, commanded by a Lieutenant-Colonel. Each combatant company consisted of three fighting sections of four tanks, and one spare or supply section. The Workshops Company, like the others, was commanded by a major, and was responsible for the upkeep of the tanks and for all repairs which could be executed in the field. At a later date these battalion workshops were abolished and merged into brigade organisations, engineer officers, with a small staff, remaining with the units. The latter, in theory (and to a large extent in fact), were now capable of effecting their own minor repairs and maintenance.<br>
There was an equipment officer to each battalion, and subsequently three assistants for the companies. No less important was the Reconnaissance branch. In addition to the Battalion R.O. (a captain), there were three company R.O.’s and three assistants, with a staff of draughtsmen. In most of the battalions the standard of this essential work, both in the office and in the field, was very high. The Tank Corps was responsible for many innovations in this branch of Intelligence, such as the more general use of layered maps, and of the study of aeroplane photographs. The Germans, whose map-making, oddly enough, was usually poor, were led to adopt the device of layering by examples which they found in captured tanks.<br>
Finally, each battalion started life with an imposing array of every type of motor transport—light cars, box-cars, lorries, mobile repair shops, motor-bicycles, &c. But this Utopian equipment was too good to last. In France the transport was pooled; and over this fatal step, and the appeals and recriminations evoked by it ever since, it is better to be silent. General Grant has said that military history should be truthful; but no good purpose can be served by dwelling on such tragedies. They are common to the human race—or at any rate to the human army.<br>
With the nine battalions now in process of formation, four in France and five at home, it was proposed to make up three brigades. Two came at once into being: the 1st, consisting of C and D Battalions, under Colonel C. D. A. Baker-Carr, D.S.O.; and the 2nd, of A and B Battalions, under Colonel A. Courage, M.C. The 3rd Brigade H.Q., Colonel J. Hardress Lloyd, D.S.O., commanding, was formed soon after to await the new arrivals. As the latter assembled in France the units would be redistributed until there were three battalions in each brigade.<br>
Before finishing with the subject of expansion, certain auxiliary services fall to be mentioned. The Tank Corps had its own signal branch, including wireless and pigeons. The former was tried in tanks especially fitted for the purpose, but was not strikingly successful. Cable-laying machines were also used in the Ypres salient. Pigeons, until the final advance, when the lofts could not keep up, proved by far the most rapid and reliable means of communication during an action.<br>
Two birds, when available, were carried in each tank; and their behaviour in the most trying circumstances imaginable was truly exemplary. I shall never forget the placid and almost blasé air with which a couple in my own tank continued to sip their water, and take apparently an intelligent interest in the proceedings while, in a sweating atmosphere of petrol fumes, high explosive, and decomposing humanity, we were crashing over fallen tree-trunks along the Poelcapelle road.<br>
Supply-tanks were first used at the battle of Messines. These were old Mark 2’s with their guns removed, and special sponsons substituted—the equivalents, in fact, of the eighteenth-century warships armed en flûte and filled with stores. Each tank carried 300 gallons of petrol and 80 of water; track and engine-oil and grease in proportion; and upwards of 10,000 rounds of S.A.A. and 6-pdr. shell. This improvisation was found so invaluable, especially in devastated areas where roads were few, that a little later regular supply companies were formed, each of three sections, and attached to brigades, the sections working with battalions. A further development ensued when the infantry, profiting indirectly by this service, asked for supply tanks of their own. A number of gun-carriers, as well as Mark 2’s, were used for this purpose in the autumn of 1918.<br>
The gun-carriers deserve a word of notice. They were tanks built on the tractor principle and designed to carry 60-pounder guns across country. The gun was lifted up bodily, carriage and all, by long arms projecting from the front of the machine, between the tracks; it was then carried like a baby to its destination and there lowered to earth again. These G.C. tanks, although driven by Tank Corps mechanics, came under the orders of the Garrison Artillery. They were used for the first time at Ypres on 31st July 1917. But that half-drowned battlefield, which all but ruined the Tank Corps itself, was the beginning and the end of the gun-carriers’ legitimate career. On fairground they might have proved valuable, but they were never tried again; and after a period of desuetude they were consigned to the hack-work of supply.<br>
The salvage companies formed yet another branch of the corps, and a most hard-working and ill-requited one. It was their tedious, and often perilous, duty to salve all tanks left completely derelict, from whatever cause, behind our front line. More than once the personnel were working for days on end under shellfire, and they suffered a high percentage of casualties. This was especially the case in the Ypres salient in the dreadful winter of 1917-18, when there were close on 190 tanks lying rusting in the mud.<br>
Some had disappeared almost completely, and round others coffer-dams had to be built to raise them from the lagoons in which they lay half-submerged. Yet ninety were salved here in ten months; and from the battalions, fresh from the fighting in this Godforsaken area, came volunteers to help in the work! No words can do justice to the difficulties which the salvers had to overcome in that morass, or to the labour and ingenuity which overcame them. I can speak with some authority on these amphibious conditions, for I left my own tank there with two feet of water already above the floor, and all the King’s coffer-dams and all the King’s men failed to get her out.<br>
I have no figures to quote as to the numbers salved on later and less inhuman battlefields, but the total must have run into hundreds. And this devoted work, unrecognised as it was, had its unexpected reward. When strikes at home were delaying production, it was the old rescued tanks lying in scores at Erin that were furbished up and put into commission again to bring battalions up to strength for Cambrai and the big battles of August 1918.