I

Though plans for expansion and the complete reorganisation of the unit on a large scale had been begun directly after the results of the action of September 15 were known, little of the actual work of training could be started till the end of November, when the “veteran” Tank personnel were at last available as instructors. They were, as we have said, withdrawn on November 19 and moved to the Bermicourt area, which had been already prepared for them.

They were the leaven—less than one “old” Company to each new Battalion—who must impart their knowledge and experience to the new men.

A subaltern who had seen any fighting with the Tanks would suddenly find himself regarded as the greatest living expert on some obscure technical point, and the newly joined who had never seen a Tank “looked with awe upon these battle-tried warriors.”

Men and officers were allowed to volunteer for the Tank Corps from other units either in France or at home. The notion of fighting in a Tank was popular, for on many of the men of the old arms—especially the infantry—the ordinary battle routine had—to put it conservatively—begun to pall.

Therefore, there was no difficulty as to supplies of men whenever the authorities turned the tap.

At first each individual wore the dress of his original unit, so that there was a strange collection of uniforms at Bermicourt—Scottish bonnets and kilts, riding breeches, and bandoleers, every conceivable dress, even to naval blue.

At Bermicourt and at Wool the deficiencies of the old Thetford training were realised. The experience gained on the Somme had been assimilated. Instructors now knew exactly what they must teach, and this time the spirit of the course of training was definite and businesslike.

The whole scheme was most carefully planned to ensure a proper balance, and the right amount of time was allotted to the different courses.

At first the work consisted chiefly in the training of more instructors, for the expansion of the Corps was to be rapid. The “settings” of all the courses showed great advances on the Thetford model, for at last the practice grounds could be made to resemble the actuality. There were old trenches and shell and mine craters, and the men were at once taken over bad ground, until the conditions of this curious progress became things of custom.

The necessity of regularising and systematising the Reconnaissance Branch had not been forgotten, and a separate Reconnaissance Service—really a specially adapted branch of “Intelligence”—was set up, under Major Hotblack.

The first organised work of the Branch was to be done in the preparations for the Battle of Arras, and it is at that period that we shall see the tentative beginnings of the very special system which was later on developed.

For the present “Reconnaissance” spent its time lecturing and being lectured, and in preparing maps or training areas for theoretical or practical exercises in the new art of Tank warfare.

II

By February 1917, when individual courses came to an end and unit training began, the H.B.M.G.C. was about 9000 strong.

Warmed by the sun of official approval, and watered with a kindly dew of Memoranda and official “definitions,” Companies had budded into Battalions and later Battalions were to burgeon into Brigades.

Even by this early date the authorities had decided that ultimately three Brigades of three Battalions each should be formed.

Each Battalion was to be equipped with seventy-two machines and to consist of four fighting sections, a Headquarters Section and a Battalion Workshop, besides that curious collection of miscellaneous individuals, tailors, barbers, shoemakers and clerks, which is necessary in every unit. General Elles was to command in France, and took over on September 29 with the rank of Colonel. His “charter” was as follows:

He was also to have a large Central Depot and Repairing Shop in his charge.

In England there was to be a Headquarters directly under the War Office and which was to administer the Corps as a whole. The home Headquarters was to be responsible for the provision of men, for supplies of “technical material,” the preliminary training of units, and the maintenance of units in France as regards men, machines, material and spare parts.

The experienced reader will perceive in this system of dual control a very promising sowing of dragon’s teeth.

No one who has had an inside knowledge of the growth of any unit or of any institution whatsoever during the War will be surprised at the fact that the Tank Corps did not escape the common lot. It suffered from growing pains.

Is there a new Ministry, a new Hospital, a new Factory, a new Battalion, nay, a single new Committee, the tiniest Association of Allotment Holders, the smallest Village Ladies’ Work Depot, that did not?

Among such organisations there are but two categories—those who have the candour to acknowledge that they went through such a period, and those who still dare not trust themselves to allude to it. Perhaps if we consider the examples that come within our own experience, we shall find that the stronger and more vital the new unit, the more capable and full of character the men who moved it, the more marked was that initial stage of uncomfortable adolescence.

The settling down, before responsibilities and prerogatives had been properly paired and allotted to the right individuals. The time when one department was still irritable from overwork and another exasperated by not being given enough responsibility. We have all of us known such a time, and most of us now look back upon its very real miseries with a kind of mingled wonder and amusement. Not otherwise do the pioneers of the Tanks look back upon their awkward age.

As soon as the programme of expansion had been decided upon17 the question of how Tank production could be increased became an exceedingly important one. Owing to the inevitable loss in battle, and still more to the unfortunate defects of the type of the track roller then supplied, there were not enough Tanks even for the training scheme proposed for France, where there were in December 1916 only sixteen machines in working order. The needs of the big training centre which was setting up at Wool could not at present be met at all, and the accumulation of any adequate reserve of fighting Tanks was, for the moment, impossible.

The Mechanical Warfare Supply Department was now responsible for Tank production, and they had the task of arranging for the building of the 1000 Tanks which had been sanctioned on September 29.

In November the M.W.S. Department made an unofficial forecast of the probable rate of production. This forecast they confirmed officially on February 1.

The total output of Tanks was to be roughly as follows:

Of these, after March at least eighty per month were to be of the Mark IV. type, of which, with the Mark IV.a, there was to be a total of over 1000.

In August or September, a proportion of the output was to be of the greatly improved Mark V. type. Actually at the end of March only sixty Tanks could be scraped together for the Battle of Arras, and most of these were machines that had been repaired after the Somme.

Not a single Mark IV. machine arrived in France until April 22, after the Battle of Arras had been fought and won, and no Mark V. machines until March 23, 1918. The entire programme was, in short, many months late.

The M.W.S.D. were, however, not altogether blameable for the occasionally somewhat astonishing discrepancy between their promises and performance.

It is, in fact, related for the defence that even the airy promises had their purpose—that the very discrepancies which the Fighting Side viewed aghast were deliberately created by the wily M.W.S.D. as bogies with which to scare supine manufacturers or reluctant Government Departments.

“What!” the M.W.S.D. would say. “You can’t do better than that! But look what we’ve actually promised! And just see what sort of names our partners the Fighting Side are calling us already! You must do better.” A duly enraged Fighting Side must have made an unsurpassable Jorkins.

In any case, however, it was usually only the M.W.S.D.’s promises which could even be called in question. Considering the means at their disposal and the difficulties which surrounded them, their practical efforts were praiseworthy.

Their troubles came chiefly from three sources. Some of the difficulties from each were inevitable, and some were not.

First there were the physical difficulties of manufacture. The shortage both of labour and material was acute, and at the period with which we are now concerned, Tanks came low in the Ministry of Munitions’ priority list. Shells, guns, aeroplanes and even transport lorries all took precedence of Tanks.

A second difficulty was the habit which the Authorities had of blowing alternately hot and cold, according as Tanks momentarily did well or ill in the field. This resulted in a tendency towards a see-saw of alternate periods of slackness and overwhelming hurry in the factories.

Tradition relates that Sir Albert Stern (the Director-General of the M.W.S.D.) here played a most useful part. He used his whole influence to maintain a steady output, acting, in fact, as a kind of stabiliser.

The third set of difficulties came from the M.W.S.D.’s own Tank designers, and from technical experts of the Fighting Side in France. Both constantly asked for small alterations in design. Often these alterations were necessary; frequently they were more or less frivolous even when they came from what might be considered the best source, that is, from those who fought the Tanks.

If the M.W.S.D. was sometimes accused of adopting an academic attitude towards the results of the “acid test” of battle, it may as truly be said of the Fighting Side that they often underrated the difficulties and problems of manufacture and failed to appreciate how often quality could only be obtained by a disproportionate sacrifice of quantity.

III

About the end of December 1916, when the dual control of Tank affairs had been working for nearly three months, it became obvious that the system was not one that would easily stand the strain of active operations. The Tank Corps had outgrown it, and the shoe would soon begin to pinch. General Elles thus summarised the position in his report of December 31:

As a result of this remonstrance, General Capper was appointed to the War Office, and the first Tank Committee was set up in the following May.

This Committee was commissioned “to systematise and strengthen liaison between the Army and the Ministry of Munitions.”

But when we consider the list of its members we do not find a single representative of the still drooping “tail.”18

However, the appointment of the Committee proved to be a step in the right direction, and an improvement began to be felt immediately.

Officers of the Tank Corps now took charge of the final running trials of all Tanks. The M.W.S.D. submitted their designs to the Committee, and in several other small particulars the control exercised by the Military side was increased.

But in August the Committee was rent asunder.

A Memorandum was submitted by the two military members, calling attention to the long and serious delays that were still occurring in the preparation of new kinds of Tanks, after the execution of the designs had been approved by the Tank Committee.

The delays, it stated, were largely due to the absence of direct intercourse between the Committee as a body and the actual designer, and they recommended that the designer should be ex officio a member of the Committee.

Sir Albert Stern and Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt dissented strongly from this Memorandum—we are not told upon what grounds—and in October a new Tank Committee was formed.

At last—upon this new Committee—the “tail” was fully represented, and the Committee met fortnightly alternately in France and in England, so keeping in touch with both factors in its work. A satisfactory organisation seems, in fact, to have been found, and the interests of all the departments involved in manufacturing and fighting these complex machines seem at last to have been adequately represented. After October difficulties appear to have been halved.

But this happier era did not dawn till after the Battle of Arras had been won, and the long misery of the Flemish campaign had somehow been endured. Meanwhile, as far as Tank control was concerned, things went on much as before.

The reader is to imagine that just such “growing pains” and just such difficulties, correspondences and memoranda filled in the background for the next six months, while the fighting at Arras, at Messines and in Flanders, whose story we are about to relate, was in progress.

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