The Tank Corps :: CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIII

SUSPENSE—THE “SAVAGE RABBITS” EPISODE—THE ENEMY’S INTENTIONS

The story of the Tank Corps from the beginning of February to nearly the end of March 1918 is one of waiting and expectancy, of strategic moves to unexpected places, of diligent rehearsal for first nights upon which the curtain never rose, of endless preparations for events which never happened.

And through all the moves, in all the odd billets, or in the open fields, when—in hourly expectation of the German attack—Tanks and their crews lay ready under the hedges, run the Tank Corps’ Pinkerton-like efforts at self-improvement, its determination to finish its winter training.

From before the middle of January we had been perfectly aware that the enemy meant to strike and to strike hard. He held a wasting security. We were waxing and he was waning. He was still our superior, still had more men available, but by Midsummer he knew that the Allies would outnumber him.

He had troubles, we knew, at home too, troubles for which the only salve was victory.

We had besides long known that before the war ended, whenever and however that end might come, we must expect a last desperate struggle. It would be the last spring of the wounded beast in which he might still find our throats, the last staggering blast of the hurricane by which the ship might still be confounded and overwhelmed.

Every sign spoke of the coming storm, but none told from which quarter we must expect it. The Germans were concentrating in such a way—at the base of the great salient formed by their line—that they could plant their blow wherever it might at the last moment seem good to them.

For better or worse, it was decided that our available forces were to be impartially distributed all along the line. Not that we had very much choice, as with our limited resources a concentration at any one strategic point must imply virtual gaps in our defence elsewhere.

For we had in January taken over an additional forty miles of line, and the men for whom the High Command in France had so frequently pleaded had not been sent out to them.

We were in for a lean three months, and to hold the extended line was as much as we could hope to accomplish.

The British and French Spring Campaign must be a defensive one. There was no longer a Russian front, and till the Americans were ready—which could not be till Midsummer at earliest—the Germans would have a numerical preponderance of nearly a quarter of a million men. Besides this, their position on interior lines and their superior lateral railway communications could at any moment give them an overwhelming local superiority.

However, we had faced worse odds before. We could form a strong line and cunning schemes of defence against which the enemy would hammer in vain. Our first defence was a deep forward zone. It consisted first of an outpost line and second of a “line of resistance.”

The line of resistance was extremely carefully laid out. About every mile redoubts of special strength were so arranged that on this sector an attack would be entrapped into our wire and held exposed to a cross-fire from our machine-guns.

The line was, in fact, to offer “patches” of resistance, and so break up the ordered advance of the enemy, who was to arrive at the next line, the “battle zone,” weakened and disorganised.

Here the main fight was to take place, and upon this zone we lavished all our skill and industry, and, having faith, we prepared no serious positions in rear of it.

The Tanks were spaced out all along a sixty-mile front.

Near Lens in the 1st Army area was the 1st Tank Brigade.

The 2nd Brigade was in 3rd Army Reserve at Haplincourt, near Bapaume.

The 3rd Brigade—which was in process of being equipped with Whippet Tanks—was also in 3rd Army Reserve.

The 4th Brigade was attached to the 5th Army and established itself in camps near PÉronne.

The 5th Brigade was in process of forming, and therefore had no definite task allotted to it, though, as we shall see, the 13th (its nucleus) Battalion actually saw a considerable amount of fighting.

Each Tank Brigade got out a defence scheme in conjunction with the Army to which it was attached. As a rule the Tanks—which had been moved up as secretly as possible—were to lie in ambush till the last moment, and then, emerging—as General Elles described it—“like Savage Rabbits from their holes,” were to fall upon the Germans in flank or rear.

His phrase struck the fancy of the Tank Corps, and the whole of this period is frequently referred to tout court as “Savage Rabbits,” somewhat to the bewilderment of the uninitiated.

II

Their schemes prepared, their Tanks in position, after an exhaustive reconnaissance, the Tank Corps waited, a process which all troops find both tedious and demoralising, unless some really profitable means can be found of employing their time.

For the Tank Corps the need of the moment was further training. Several of the Battalions had been dragged untimely from half-finished courses, several were almost fresh from Wool, and had still most of their tactical training to do. Everywhere there were units and individuals who had lost “school attendances” to make up.

The great difficulty was that Battalions and even Companies were so spread out and scattered that it was almost impossible to collect the students for instruction.

The regular curriculums were out of the question, so the directors of Tank training immediately set to work to evolve new courses that would fit the altered circumstances.

In some ways the Reconnaissance Side fared best.

Their chief instructional material—the actual country to be fought over—was there for their students to study, and even when the pupils were so scattered that a sufficient audience could not be collected for a formal lecture, many ingenious little practical schemes could be carried out and written work could always be done.

They had a fairly definite standard to aim at. Had the battalions remained in the training areas, every officer and man would have been put through a five days’ course in Reconnaissance. Under normal conditions such courses were arranged more or less as follows:

On the first day, the students heard an introductory lecture, practised chalk layering, heard a short discourse on map reading, did a practical comparison of map and country upon which they had to answer questions.

On the second day, visualising country from a map was taught, and practice indoors was gone through with a model. In the afternoon panorama sketching was practised, a short lecture heard, some visualising was done and the characterisation of landmarks was practised, the day being finished up by night guiding.

On the third morning, close observation of a certain sector, involving sketches and notes, was undertaken, and visibility practices carried out. Later, the students were taken for an “observation march,” and having described the features of the country they had traversed, they had to write a report upon the new sector which they had observed in the morning, and upon this report they were later questioned.

On the fourth day, a new sector was visited, upon which they had previously made notes from a map. These notes they had to compare with reality, and to notice whether their imagination had been faulty. A lecture on obstacles commonly found on approach marches followed, and one on aerial photographs with practical work. Night work followed, with special reference to the study of the stars.

On the fifth day, oblique and other aerial photographs were compared with the actual ground, and a lecture was delivered summing up the special points of the course.

Sometimes, however, during the “Savage Rabbit” period, lectures were possible, and for these occasions a rather new type of discourse was evolved, in which the broader aspects of Reconnaissance and of the study of country were dealt with.

Local history was recalled:—how men had lived and fought in the villages and cornfields that lay immediately about them; how that great abbey church that stood alone was erected by a group of pious merchants as a thankoffering for their town’s escape from the plague; how to this little town the Revolution had brought a Committee of Public Safety, and how it had held its red assize in the coffee-room of the HÔtel de l’Europe, or how Bonaparte had lain at this or that chÂteau on his way to the Camp at Boulogne.

Or again, the lecture might be more strictly military and concern the place of Reconnaissance amongst the arts of war, and the action and reaction of one arm of the Service upon another—the ever-present trilogy of wire, trench and machine-gun, new theories of artillery work, the latest fashions in tactics or the effects of the latest poison-gas.

Then, where some isolated Tank Company or even section lay ready day and night by its machines and lectures were impossible, an itinerant instructor would set the exiles little schemes to carry out.

The two following exercises are typical:—

“Two small parties of officers go at different times to positions from which a good view is obtainable. They pick out landmarks, etc., and their peculiarities, taking notes or making sketches. From these notes or sketches each party writes out three or four questions on landmarks, general observation, routes taken, etc. On their return the two parties exchange their questions, answers are written, and these answers returned to the writers of the questioners to correct.

“Catch questions, such as ‘How many windows had such and such a house?’ will, of course, be discountenanced, and only useful tests permitted.

“Exercise II.—The student was asked to sketch the outline of a cottage from about 800 yards distant. He then had to consider from the position of the house on the map, and the contour lines of the ground, what the appearance of that cottage would be likely to be from a different point of view. Of this hypothetical elevation he had then to make an outline sketch, and finally to walk over the ground and compare his imaginings with actuality.”

Practices for approach marches were also given by means of an exercise on tape laying and the taking of compass bearings.

III

And still the Germans stayed their hands, and still we waited and speculated upon what the coming campaign might hold for us. For the Tank Corps it seemed certainly to portend a new form of warfare—the Tank duel.

All sorts of things were rumoured concerning the German preparations, and the sheets of the Tank Corps Intelligence Summary for late February are full of little items of information of a perfectly new kind.

Tanks of some sort were certainly being made at Krupp’s.

Prisoners had been caught who described them as larger and heavier than the British machines. We had reason to believe that men were being withdrawn from certain other units to form Tank crews.

Then, in the next day’s Summary, it would be reported that airmen had found out that in certain Regimental, Brigade, and Divisional training schemes which were being carried out by the enemy, horses and wagons were being used, representing Tanks. Combined infantry and Tank attacks of all sorts appeared to be being rehearsed. Again, some recently captured prisoners said that a few derelict Tanks, which the Germans had taken at Cambrai, were being put into order, they seemed to think, as training rather than as fighting machines.

It is to be imagined that the notion of the new warfare, of meeting their kind in combat for the first time, was exceedingly interesting to all ranks of the Tank Corps; and there was not a single hut in a single camp where wonderful new ideas for tactics and manoeuvres wherewith to annihilate the new enemy, were not really elaborated.

We did not know that the bitterness and anxiety of a long retreat lay before us; a retreat whose gall and wormwood were to enter into our very souls, and of whose confused events it is even now almost impossible to write either with accuracy or impartiality.

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