Chapter XII: 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.

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.

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.