It is not perhaps too fanciful to envisage the battles of April 24, 25 and 26, though they were by no means uniformly satisfactory little actions, as belonging to a different and a happier era than the action of Villers Bretonneux itself. On the 23rd we had been fighting for our lives. Through the three subsequent days’ fighting, it began to be more and more obvious that a change had taken place. Either through our desperate efforts to save Amiens, or by the workings of some deeper cause, spent and disorganised as we were, we had begun to pull level with the Germans again. The change was slight, but none the less palpable.

On the 25th, a few Tanks of the 1st and 3rd Battalions fought with the 3rd Corps in a counter-attack against the most advanced of the new German positions in the Bois d’Aquenne. The Tanks did a good deal of execution, and we succeeded in driving in some of the forward German posts.

On the 26th, four Tanks of the 1st Brigade had an interesting experience.

The Allied forces on this part of the line consisted of a most curious mixture of arms and races.

The scene, for example, in a neighbouring wood about ten days before is thus described by the historian of the 1st Battalion:

On April 26, it was in company with the Moroccan Division that the 1st Battalion fought.

The enemy had launched a strong attack against the Front held by these troops at 6 a.m. on the morning of the 26th, under cover of the usual heavy mist. Very soon, however, a section of Tanks under Captain Groves got right in amongst the advancing Germans and inflicted heavy casualties upon them. The French Colonial infantry, who had been obliged to fall back, immediately rallied and brought the German assault to a standstill. In the course of the action Second Lieutenant Wilson’s Tank found itself among some German heavy guns, which it attacked with case shot61 and machine-gun fire, wounding most of their crews and killing the rest. Mr. Wilson then patrolled up and down some trenches held by the enemy and cost them very heavy losses by his enfilading fire. Eventually, having fired every round of ammunition in his Tank, he decided to go back, but while he was on his way, his magneto broke down. However, he sent back a messenger to fetch a new magneto, and after this had been fitted, he returned to the rallying point, his Tank having suffered the total casualties of two men slightly wounded.

On the 28th, another Company of the same Battalion again co-operated with the Moroccan Division. This time it was the Allies who were the attackers, their objective being the Hangard Wood. Owing to a mistake, the four Tanks did not get into action until rather late. Second Lieutenant Jones’ Tank, however, fought a very good action, clearing out a great number of machine-gun nests in the Wood, and generally giving a great deal of help to the Moroccan infantry in their advance. The Tank stayed in the Wood, until all its ammunition had been expended, and then, the infantry deciding not to make a further attack, it was withdrawn and rejoined its Company.

Except a small action of the 1st Battalion on May 2, the Tank Corps saw no fighting for the next six weeks, and it was not till July 4 that they fought again in any considerable action.

II

The general situation in May was still such as to cause our High Command a certain anxiety. It is easy to be wise after the event and say that the Germans must obviously have outrun their transport and overtaxed the limited road capacity of the devastated area which lay behind them. In early May this, though true, was not obvious. Meanwhile, we had been too much weakened by the disasters of the last six weeks to be able to counter-attack. Consequently, the enemy had the same opportunities for reconstruction as we had ourselves, and although we felt confident that after such a hurricane of battles there must be a breathing space for both Armies, we were by no means certain what would be the respective rÔles of the two opposing sides when the struggle came to be resumed. Our most pressing need was the filling of the gaps in our Divisions and the closing of the huge breaches which the German advance had made in our defensive systems. The greatest need was for men. We had, it is true, to lay out new trench lines and reconstruct such old systems as already existed, but it was not likely that the enemy would afford us time to establish new defences comparable with those which he had already proved his power of overrunning. Therefore it was to procuring new and well-trained troops that our chief efforts must be directed. The men procured, there must be railways upon which to move them.

Some 200 miles of broad-gauge track was laid between April and July and a complete series of new defences were built, involving, incredible as it may seem, 5000 miles of trench. Nor were Tanks left out of the scheme of reorganisation. But, alas! owing to the extreme need of infantry reinforcements, and the difficulty of immediately re-arming Battalions which had lost their Tanks during the Retreat, this “reconstruction” all but took the form, not of augmentation, but of diminution. It was proposed to reduce the number of Tank Brigades from six to four. The appearance of enemy Tanks, however, soon quashed this project. Not only had the Corps lost heavily in machines, but the fighting done by the Lewis gun Units had been of a particularly strenuous kind, and several Battalions had sustained such casualties in trained and experienced men as to cause great anxiety at Tank Headquarters. However, the Tank Corps were only in the same predicament as the rest of the British Army, and there was nothing for it but to gather up the bits with as much grace as possible and to start away as quickly as might be on the work of reconstruction. All through May, Mark V. machines were arriving in France at the rate of about sixty a week. Some of the Battalions which had not taken any part in the Retreat had been left in their original areas, in case the Germans should attack, so that we find Battalions (for example of the 1st Brigade) doing “Savage Rabbit” as late as the middle of May. For the most part, however, the Corps was gathered together undergoing intensive training in the Bermicourt area. All Tank Units were to be ready for action—re-armed, re-equipped and re-trained—by August 1.

The Central Workshops set to work in early June to prepare sledges for supply haulage, bridges upon which the Whippets could cross wide obstacles, and “Cribs” for the heavy Tanks. There “Cribs” were big hexagonal oaken crates, reinforced with steel, which were an improved and lighter version of the fascines which were improvised for the Battle of Cambrai. Training grounds and workshops hummed with the preparations, and when, in the last days of July, the call came, it was, as we shall see, found possible to launch 400 Tanks at little over a week’s notice.

It was while the Corps was training at Bermicourt that the foundation of the excellent relations which ever afterwards existed between Tanks and the French infantry was laid. A great number of French troops happened to be billeted in and around the Tank Corps area, and their keenness to learn all they could about our machines and their tactics afforded great pleasure to the men of the British Tank Corps. General Le Maistre, commanding the 10th French Army, particularly asked that Tank demonstrations should be held for the Units of his command. This was done, and all through May and June two or three of these demonstrations were given weekly. Besides French troops, representatives from a number of British and Colonial Corps, and the Canadian and Australian Corps, also came to watch, to their great edification.

III

We have said that only a few minor Tank actions were fought during the last part of May and the month of June. Two of these small encounters, however, were rather interesting. To begin with, the 17th Armoured Car Battalion fought its first action in company with the French on June 11. At 9.30 on the morning of June 10 orders were received by Colonel Carter, commanding the Battalion, to report to the 1st French Army at Contay. At Contay instructions were issued for the Battalion to proceed to Ravenel, near St. Just. The Battalion got this order by telephone, and although the night was very dark and wet, and the roads crowded with traffic, it reached Ravenel after a sixty miles’ journey by five in the morning of June 11. That same day it went into action with the 10th French Army in its counter-attack at Belloy. Two sections of the Armoured Cars engaged the enemy with machine-gun fire, but unfortunately the roads here were piled high with every sort of dÉbris. This prevented the cars from being as active as they were to prove themselves later.

The second small action was a night raid, interesting as the first in which Tanks had ever been engaged. Here the 10th Battalion fought in conjunction with the 4th Corps. We were endeavouring to capture a series of posts near Bucquoy, only five Platoons of infantry and five female Tanks being employed. The raid began at about half-past eleven at night. We were met with a heavy barrage from trench mortars and machine-guns, and the infantry were held up. The Tanks, however, managed to push forward, and carried on the attack in the pitch dark by themselves. As they advanced they met with a number of large parties of Germans, into the “brown” of which they fired. The Tanks certainly accounted for a great many of the enemy, though it being, as we have said, extremely dark, it was impossible to make a very exact computation of the “bag.” Curiously enough, not a single Tank was damaged by the trench mortar barrage, which was extremely heavy. One Tank was swarmed over by a particularly bold party of the enemy and the crew shot them down with their revolvers. Later on this same Tank managed to rescue a wounded infantry officer who had earlier been taken prisoner by the Germans. The raid is interesting as it demonstrated the possibility of manoeuvring Tanks in the dark through the enemy’s lines—not a single machine lost direction—and also showed how much protection was afforded to the machines by their invisibility.

IV

By the middle of June the British High Command had grown anxious to make some test of the position of things on the enemy’s side of the line. This they proposed to do by a more or less limited and tentative attack, an attack which might, if it was successful, be utilised as a dress rehearsal for larger ventures, or which, if it failed, would not commit us too deeply. The Australians had been constantly harassing their vis À vis on the Villers Bretonneux Front, and the High Command gave out that for this and other reasons they considered that a better place than the sector opposite Villers Bretonneux could hardly be found from which to launch our ballon d’essai. What those “other reasons” were did not appear for nearly a month after the battle had been fought. It was proposed that between sixty and seventy Tanks belonging to the 5th Brigade should be employed. Our attack was to have a strictly limited objective, its ostensible purpose being to capture the spur running from the main Villers Bretonneux plateau towards the Somme, on the east side of Hamel, and thus to gain important observation and incidentally a useful jumping-off place for any subsequent advance. “Z” day was to be on July 4.

Directly the attack had been decided upon, Tanks and Australians began their combined training in the area of the 5th Tank Brigade. Tank units were at once permanently affiliated to corresponding Australian infantry units with whom they were to fight, and by this means a very close comradeship was cultivated. It was (tradition relates), most necessary that some special steps should be taken to ensure the confidence of the Australian infantry in the Tank Corps, for, in the absence of artillery preparation, upon the Tanks would almost entirely depend the success and prestige of the Australians in this first Allied offensive since the March disaster.

Now the Australians, though having, as it were, a natural affinity for the activity and surprise of a Tank as against a prepared artillery attack, were not inclined to bestow their approval on the Tanks without due cause being given.

They still had vivid memories of the tragedy of errors of the Bullecourt incident in 1917.

They were, however, very open-minded, and the battle partners had not long been in training together before their relations were particularly cordial.

Coy and hard to please as were the Australians in the beginning, the triumphant success of their partnership in battle left them no memory of their earlier shyness, and made them vociferous in their praises of a combination that the Tanks had long felt would prove notably effective.

The plan of the attack soon took exact shape. It is worth more or less detailed consideration, as it was upon the lines of the Battles of Cambrai and Hamel that all set Tank attacks were afterwards based.

The main tactical features of the attack were the strongholds of Vaire Wood, Hamel Wood, Pear-shaped Trench and Hamel Village. There was no defined system of trench, except the old British lines just east of Hamel which the enemy now occupied, and which had, of course, been originally sited to face east. For the rest, the German defensive consisted in machine-gun nests.

The attacking forces were the 4th Australian Division and four companies of American infantry. The Artillery was to provide a rolling barrage, behind which the infantry were to advance, followed by the Tanks, which were only to pass ahead of them when resistance was encountered. This last arrangement did not prove a good one.

The going was good, and the fertile country lay still and smiling in its Midsummer pride. The camp allotted to the Tanks lay five miles behind the line in the angle formed by the meeting of the Somme and the Luce.

The sixty fighting Tanks which were employed in the attack were divided into two waves, the first of forty-eight, and the second of twelve machines. As the advance intended was but a short one, the usual gigantic system of supply dumps was not necessary. On the contrary, each fighting Tank carried forward ammunition and water for the infantry, and the four supply Tanks were detailed to carry up R.E. supplies and other stores.

No precise information as to time and place had been given to the Tank Corps till just a week before the battle; but as the area had been carefully reconnoitred for the last two months, very little had to be done to complete this side of the preparations.

On the night of July 1–2, the Tanks were moved up to the assembly point, an early move which was the result of the Australians’ last lingering doubts as to the capacity of the Tanks for arriving in time at rendezvous. No chance was thus given to any Tank of being late in the starting line.

Machines of “C” flight of No. 8 Squadron of aeroplanes were to make their dÉbut as honorary members of the Tank Corps on the morrow, for the wonderful potentialities of aeroplane and Tank co-operation were now fully realised, and the Tank Corps had been allotted a squadron of its own.

VI

At three o’clock on the morning of July 4, almost before the sky had begun to lighten, the Tank engines were swung up all along our line, and at two minutes past the hour sixty graceful Mark V.’s slid forward after their infantry, two low-flying aeroplanes escorting them. As the Tanks moved along, the crew’s blessed the sweet running of their new machines, for there had not been a single mechanical hitch of any sort, and they knew that the shrewd eyes of the Australians had been fixed like gimlets upon them.

But the whole day was to be one long triumph for the Mark V.

Here and there as the attack surged forward the Tanks were leading, following close behind the bursting shells. Here and there the Australians were ahead. The enemy’s infantry put up little or no fight, but their machine-gunners resisted us with the tenacious courage which we had learned to expect.

But our onrush was inexorable. The new Tanks were possessed, the Germans found, of a deadly power of manoeuvre which they used to the full, expending little ammunition upon machine-gun nests, but, even when they had passed an emplacement by in the first rush, swinging swiftly round on the wretched gunners and crushing guns and crews beneath them. As a Tank chronicler somewhat grimly remarks: “This method eliminated all chance of the enemy coming to life again after the attack had passed by.”

Over 200 machine-guns were accounted for during the day. There were also other and rarer little groups of picked men which the Tanks here and there routed out of the standing crops.

These little parties, generally consisting of three men, were armed with a special rifle of gigantic size designed to be fired—like our Lewis gun—from a bipod. Its projectile was a heavy steel-cored armour-piercing bullet.

It was a new anti-Tank weapon, a weapon from which the Germans hoped great things.

With the 13th Battalion, a Tank which had advanced ahead of the infantry, came upon some enemy dug-outs, on the far side of a trench too broad for their machine to cross. From these dug-outs the enemy were keeping up a hot fire.

The Tank Commander, Second Lieutenant Edwards, and Private Benns, immediately got out of their Tank and attacked the garrison on foot. Between them the two killed seven of the enemy with their revolvers, and the rest they took prisoners, and handed over to the infantry at the first opportunity.

There were many fine pieces of individual work, especially instances of Tanks helping each other under heavy fire, and there is little doubt that it was to this friendly co-operation, this towing of lame Tanks out of hot corners, the astonishingly low casualties in machines were partly due.

The despatch tells how the battle fared all along the line.

Our little success had been complete and triumphant.

No less than fifty-seven of the sixty fighting Tanks came through the day without a scratch, the infantry killed and wounded amounted to less than half the German prisoners who passed through our cages; and as we have seen, the battle between Tanks and machine-guns being À l’outrance, the proportion of Germans killed to those made prisoners had been unusually high.

As for the Tank crews, they suffered only thirteen men wounded. To our great satisfaction also, the five damaged machines were all salved, and thus the armament of the Mark V.’s could not be investigated by the enemy.

But at first almost the most striking characteristic of the victory seemed the perfect co-operation between Tanks and infantry.

The Tanks and the Australians were equally enthusiastic over one another’s performances. The Australians were surprised and delighted at the weight and solidity which the sixty Tanks had lent their impact, and at the sense of support and comradeship which their men had experienced.

The Tank Corps were equally impressed by the superb moral of the Australians,66 “who never considered that the presence of Tanks exonerated them from fighting, and who took instant advantage of any opportunity created by the Tanks.”

A generous and lasting friendship had been established. The 5th Tank Brigade and their Australians were destined throughout their coming partnership to prove an almost invincible combination.

But it was not alone the battle partners who were pleased and surprised.

The whole Allied front rang with the news of victory.

We had sent up our tentative ballon d’essai, and behold it had sailed up, high above our highest expectations and now hung, a token in the sky. All men might know that though Apollyon had straddled all across the way, we had beaten him and were at last come out of the Valley of Humiliation.

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