Chapter I: Introduction: My Dear Williams-Ellis,

You ask me for a foreword to your history, and invite me, too, to agree to, criticise, or even refute the conclusions of your Epilogue.

The first task I undertake with pleasure, though I feel it would be more justly and more skilfully done either by one of the pioneers who sowed that we might reap, or by the rare thinker who in our own time has contributed so much to keep us on the lines of clear understanding and progress.

As to the second task I must decline a direct reply, and for many reasons I can no more than touch generally upon the questions you have dealt with in so interesting a way. I find them, however, not yet sufficiently remote in time, either to be clear themselves, or to be distinctly placed in a picture itself still obscure.

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Of the early days of the Tanks, and of the early struggles, difficulties and hopes of the pioneers, I have no first-hand knowledge--to comment at any length upon them would be out of place. They do, however, represent a remarkable effort of persistent and courageous faith, of determination to succeed in the face of lukewarmness and even scepticism, of the overcoming of many practical difficulties. Above all, they present a great clearness of vision on the part of three men in particular--Swinton, Stern and d’Eyncourt.

It is remarkable that one of the first official papers on the tactical use of Tanks, written by General Swinton early in 1915, should have been almost literally translated into action on August 8, 1918.

To General Swinton, too, is due the implanting, into all ranks, of the fundamental idea of the Tank as a weapon for saving the lives of infantry. This idea was indeed the foundation of the moral of the Tank Corps, for it spread from the fighting personnel to the depots and workshops, and even to the factories.

More than anything else, it was this sentiment which kept men ploughing through the mud of 1917, in the dark days when often the chance of reaching an objective had fallen to ten per cent.; which kept workshops in full swing all round the clock on ten and eleven hour shifts for weeks and, once, for months on end; which, finally, secured from the factories an intensive and remarkable output.

Sir Albert Stern brought to his labours a whole-hearted energy and enthusiasm unsurpassed. But more practical than this alone, he ensured initial production by a contempt for routine and material difficulties and a resilience to rebuff as fortunate as they were courageous.

To Sir Eustace d’Eyncourt, the only member of the original Committee still officially connected with us, a great debt is due. We have been fortunate to have had at our disposal an engineer of his wide practical experience, who devoted much of his scanty leisure to our guidance both in policy and in detail, whose sagacious counsels have more than once checked the impetuosity of some of his associates.

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Before passing to the aspects of Tank history with which I have been directly concerned, I wish to make reference to two organisations vital to the Tank Corps in the field. For if that represented the point of the spear, they combined to form a most solid and dependable shaft.

The first of these two was the Training Organisations set up in England to produce the men; second, the manufactories which produced the machines.

The task of the Training Centre and the cadet schools was particularly onerous. The organisation of any new instructional centre in the haste and pressure of the time was no easy task--its work was often thankless and subject to much ill-informed and light-hearted criticism.

The Training Centre of the Tank Corps had additional difficulties. There was no guidance as to training--the entire system had to be thought out from the beginning, and continually modified by the experience of the battlefield--instructors had not only to be found but trained--esprit de corps and discipline had to be built up; and all this against time.

It may perhaps be a compensation to the many officers and men who lived laborious days, and were not rewarded by seeing the results of their work in the field, to know that “France” has never been under any illusion as to the great thoroughness of their work.

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The work carried through in the munitions factories, and the ingenuity and solid labour that backed the efforts of the soldier in the field, are perhaps not yet fully appreciated by the fighting men. In France one might hear of sporadic unrest, but till one met with it, one realised nothing of the genuine faithful grind at production of objects of whose destination the worker often knew nothing, of the blind patience under duress of shortage, and of crowded accommodation; of hope deferred.

The Tank Corps was fortunate indeed in having established at an early date close relations with its workers, and more fortunate still at a critical time in being able to declare a substantial dividend on the capital of wealth, labour and brains entrusted to it by its section of industrial Britain.

Once touch was obtained with the worker himself, the interest taken by J. Bull in the factory, in T. Atkins in the field, was more than fully proved, not only by the demand for copies of accounts of Tank actions, but by the steadily increased output that was maintained.

The thing is only natural. Put a man or a woman to turn out bolts from a machine for eight hours a day, and you will get a certain result. Tell her or him that the bolts will go into a Tank that will fight probably in six weeks’ time; that the Tank will save lives and slay Huns; that yesterday Tanks did so-and-so; that last week No. 10567, made in Birmingham, and commanded by Sergeant Jones of Cardiff, rounded up five machine-guns ... you will get quite a different result; moreover, it is John Bull’s right and due to be told these things.

We had not got quite a complete result in this direction, but we were getting near it, and perhaps our co-operation of the back and the front was as nearly a microcosm of an ideal national co-operation in war as has been achieved. We aimed at Team Work.

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You who have coped in a short compass with the whole story of Tanks can well realise the difficulties of dealing concisely, even by comment, with the kaleidoscopic events of two and a half crowded years--with the questions of organisation, training, personnel, design, supply, fighting, reorganisation, workshops, experiments, salvage, transportation, maintenance.

I shall attempt no more than to supplement your admirably drawn narrative as to one or two points which appear to me to be of major importance or interest.

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The employment of Tanks in the field was one long conflict between policy and expediency. Policy seemed always to demand that we should wait until all was prepared, until sufficient masses of machines should be ready to use in one great attack that would break the German defensive system. Expediency necessitated the employment of all available forces at dates predetermined, and in localities fixed for reasons other than their suitability as Tank country. Battles are not won with Tanks alone, and in early 1917, for example, the Tank was still a comparatively untested machine. Indeed, the later issues of the Mark I. developed weaknesses in detail so alarming as to preclude anything more than a short-lived effort in battle.

Not until the Mark IV. machine was well into delivery could a guarantee as to its degree of mechanical reliability be given, and by that time the trend of the year’s campaigning was unalterably fixed.

And so it was that it was our fate up to the first Cambrai battle to “chip in when we could” in conditions entirely unfavourable.

The employment of Tanks in Flanders has often been criticised, without intelligent appreciation of the fact that had they not fought in Flanders they would have probably fought nowhere. Better, therefore, that they should fight and pull less than half their weight, and still save lives, than that they should stand idle while tremendous issues were at stake.

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If employment in the field was a struggle between policy and expediency, the principles of production and design represented a direct conflict of opposing policies, resulting happily in compromise. The fighting man, conscious of the weaknesses of the earlier weapons, and visualising development which he believed to be obtainable, and knew to be necessary, and the soldier-engineer overburdened with difficulties of maintenance and cursed with the nightmare of Spares and Spares and more Spares--both cried aloud from France for rapid progress in design.

In England the other side of the picture was presented with equal force. The process of bulk production necessitates orders placed long in advance, materials were difficult to obtain, plans of track work and workshop organisation are not susceptible of change without delay, change, too, entailing irritation of factory staffs and workmen. Production once agreed to and embarked upon, a very complicated machinery is with difficulty set in motion. To stop or change this machinery results often in a loss of output which is in no way compensated by the improvements ultimately obtained.

The same problem must have occurred in many branches of war production. The best, however, is only the enemy of the good, if the good is good enough.

You have portrayed the difficulties arising from these conditions in