Theunissen himself was struggling to close the cupola flap that he had left open until now. Even though he had been adjutant of the panzer unit for months, Theunissen had never once bothered to look inside a tank, and only possessed a basic understanding of how they worked.
Gaps had been deliberately created in the German trench lines to allow the advancing tanks and shock troops to pour through. Mephisto and the twelve other A7Vs lumbered past the German troops occupying the lines of reserve, support and frontline trenches between Villers-Bretonneux and Monument Wood. Out into No Man’s Land they rolled, heading at six kilometres per hour towards the British front line a kilometre away.
To Richard, it seemed just like the training day back at Charleroi. But as Mephisto crawled along, Richard began to hear bullets hitting the front and sides of the tank’s hull. He knew that the armour was thirty centimetres thick at the front, twenty centimetres thick on the sides, and ten centimetres thick at the rear. No British bullet, he knew, had the power to penetrate that armour. To Richard, the sound was like winter hail on the roof of his home back in Bavaria. And just as his home protected him from the hail, Mephisto’s armour protected him from the bullets.
A light above the tank’s gun glowed red – a signal from Lieutenant Theunissen for Eckhardt to fire directly ahead. Peering through a front port slit, Eckhardt saw the flashes from British Vickers machine guns in trenches to their front. Choosing one machine gun as his target, he fired. The 57 mm gun boomed, an empty shell casing clattered to the floor, and the interior of the tank filled with the stench of cordite. The Vickers was silenced.
Richard didn’t have to be told what to do. Sliding a new shell into the gun’s breech, he stood back and turned for another shell. Again Eckhardt fired, and another empty shell casing hit the floor. Time and again, the process was repeated. Few inside the tank could see the results of Eckhardt’s firing. Every man just did his job. Once the big gun opened up, the forward machine-gunners let rip with their Maxims. The clatter of their weapons now joined the boom of the cannon, as Mephisto raked the British trench line.
Inside Mephisto, the combined noise of growling engines, pounding cannon and jabbering machine guns was almost unbearable. Richard’s head was aching as if someone was cutting his skull with a saw. Bathed in sweat, he felt like he wanted to throw up. But he couldn’t slacken. He had to keep feeding the gun as Sergeant Eckhardt found one target after another to blast: machine-gun positions, trenches, wire barriers.
Mephisto rolled over the top of the barbed wire that was strung ahead of the British trenches, mashing it into the earth and creating a path for the infantry following in their wake. Helmeted British heads bobbed up out of the trench in front of the tank, only to duck back down again to avoid Mephisto’s devastating gunfire. Mephisto reached the front parapet of the trench and rolled right over it as terrified British soldiers cringed a metre beneath the monster. As the tank straddled the trench, all four of Mephisto’s side machine-gunners fired up and down its length, killing and wounding scores of Britons. It occurred to Richard that Papa Heiber had to be right – they were indeed riding the Devil to war.
The four tanks of Gruppe 2 crossed the British front line, brushing aside all resistance. Any British troops still alive would be dealt with by the following German troops, who either killed with bullet and bayonet or captured them. The sight of the huge metal machines coming their way with bullets bouncing off them so unnerved many of the British troops in the support and reserve lines that they frantically climbed from their trenches and, throwing away their weapons, ran blindly towards the rear. The rest were fodder for the tanks’ guns. Unstoppable, these steel fortresses on tracks surged on, firing at every potential target in khaki that came into their gunners’ sights.
The early morning fog hung low over the ground as the Leyland truck drew to a halt on the perimeter of a wood called Bois l’Abbé, just to the west of the town of Villers-Bretonneux. Frankie and Taz’s eyes were immediately drawn to three big brown British Mark IV tanks sitting out in the open a hundred metres away, in front of a line of reserve trenches. Even though they were mostly covered by green camouflage netting, there was no mistaking the massive metal tank tracks beneath.
‘So that’s a tank,’ said Frankie, a hint of awe in his voice. ‘Big buggers, aren’t they?’
Taz nodded. ‘I wouldn’t want to get in the way of one, that’s for sure.’
‘Right, you two,’ Lieutenant Byford called, alighting from the cab. ‘Down you come.’
As soon as Frankie and Taz jumped down, the truck bumped away, the driver eager to retreat before enemy shells found it. From a small tented camp in the wood, a British Tank Corps lieutenant came hurrying towards the three new arrivals.
‘I’m looking for the Tank Corps’ 1st Battalion,’ called Lieutenant Byford.
‘You’ve found it,’ said the British officer. ‘You must be our Australian infantry observers.’ He held out a hand. ‘Frank Mitchell.’
‘Tom Byford, 13th Brigade,’ the Australian lieutenant replied, shaking Mitchell’s hand. ‘Are those your Mark IVs over there?’ He nodded towards the three stationary tanks. ‘Not a good idea to leave them out in the open for Jerry to spot, I would have thought.’
‘We had to relocate them there in the night,’ Mitchell explained. ‘A couple of Jerry planes came over just before dusk and saw where we had our tanks in the wood. Now, if Jerry shells the wood, the tanks are out of harm’s way. Come and meet Captain Brown, my CO.’
Byford walked with Mitchell, and Frankie and Taz fell in behind them, with the British officer paying not the slightest attention to the pair.
‘They moved the tanks to avoid being hit by shells,’ Taz whispered to Frankie, ‘but not their tents?’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t work that one out.’
‘Officer logic,’ Frankie replied with a shrug. ‘A lot of them officers don’t think like us ordinary blokes.’
As the four of them came to one of the khaki tents, a British captain emerged.
‘Tom Byford, sir, 52nd Battalion, AIF,’ the Australian said, exchanging salutes with the captain.
‘Yes, well,’ responded Brown, a florid-faced man, ‘you Australian chaps just carry on with whatever it is you’re meant to do.’ He then turned and went back into his tent.
Mitchell, looking a little embarrassed, turned to Byford. ‘A spot of tea?’ He nodded to a kettle hanging over a cooking fire and to his orderly, who was holding a canister of tea from Fortnum & Mason in London.
‘Not at the moment, thanks,’ Byford replied. ‘When are your tanks supposed to move up?’
‘No idea,’ Mitchell confessed. ‘We’re awaiting orders from brigade.’ He dropped his eyes to Byford’s chest. In addition to a brown leather binoculars case hanging around his neck, the Australian lieutenant also had a gasmask container draped there. ‘Glad to see you’ve brought your respirator, Byford. Jerry dropped rather a lot of gas on us yesterday. Pretty unpleasant, I have to say.’
Frankie glanced at Taz, and both looked down at the gasmasks resting against their chests. They’d never had to use them for real before. Both had heard stories about how mustard sulphur gas attacked the eyes, the lungs and the skin. And both had hoped they’d never have to take the gasmasks from their canvas containers.
At that moment, German shells began to rain upon the wood. Some contained high explosives and brought trees crashing down as if they’d been knocked over by an invisible giant. But half the shells billowed yellow-brown smoke after detonating.
‘Gas!’ yelled Lieutenant Mitchell, grabbing for his gasmask. ‘Masks on!’
Every man in the wood was already ditching his helmet to don his mask. Taz and Frankie were among the first to get theirs on. Officially known as the ‘box gasmask’, this device consisted of a canvas hood that covered the face and was fitted with two large glass-covered eyepieces and a hose that ran down to a respirator on the front of the canvas bag. Air entering the respirator passed over charcoal, which
purified it of the toxins in the mustard sulphur gas now floating around them on the morning air. As fast as Taz was in fixing his mask in place, he still picked up a whiff of gas. To him, it smelled a bit like garlic.
Captain Brown, mask in place, emerged from his tent. ‘To the vehicles,’ he instructed, his voice muffled.
Lieutenant Mitchell turned to his Australian counterpart. ‘Byford, you and your men had better come with me.’
Byford, who was putting his helmet back on, nodded.
The gas, combining with smoke from shells, blanketed the air, making it impossible to see more than a few metres in any direction.
‘Link hands!’ Mitchell called. ‘I’ll lead the way.’
Byford reached out and grabbed Taz’s hand, and Taz took hold of Frankie’s. Meanwhile, Captain Brown, Mitchell and his orderly did the same. Side by side, the two groups of three stumbled through the lethal murk with Mitchell navigating the way towards his tank purely by instinct. Where the rest of his men were, he had no idea.
‘My gasmask’s broken!’ Mitchell’s orderly suddenly bawled, panicking.
‘Then run like hell, man!’ yelled Captain Brown.
The orderly let go of the captain’s hand and, in terror, ran off blindly into the haze towards the rear, crashing through brambles and over fallen trees.
The rest of them continued on and reached the trio of tanks, which stood in clearer air. In the official records, Mitchell’s Mark IV was simply known as tank number 4066. But Mitchell and his crew had named it Sir Lancelot, after one of the gallant knights of the Round Table from the legend of King Arthur. A solitary member of Mitchell’s crew lay beside Sir Lancelot. Without a gasmask, he was purple in the face and wheezing from gas poisoning. Looking at the unfortunate gassing victim, Taz felt guilty that he had a gasmask and the poor tank man didn’t, not that he would have changed places with him. Beckoning Frankie to help him, Taz dragged the wheezing man up into a seated position against the side of his tank.
As Brown went to check on the other tanks, Frankie, Taz and their lieutenant helped Mitchell drag the camouflage netting off Sir Lancelot, revealing a massive machine with cannon and machine guns poking from each side. Like the German A7Vs, this was nothing more than a large metal box on tracks. But without a crew, it was a useless metal box.
A thunderclap behind Frankie and Taz made the pair spin around in alarm. Fifty metres away, behind a line of reserve trenches, the guns of a British artillery battery were commencing a reply to the German bombardment. Taz couldn’t help but think that the British gunners, wearing gasmasks as they frantically loaded and fired their guns, resembled alien beings. Looking east, he could see the sun rising through the fog and smoke, a red roundel low in the grey sky.
After fifteen minutes, the enemy bombardment shifted to targets in the British rear, and the Bois l’Abbé was left silent and shattered. The remainder of Mitchell’s seven crewmen came in dribs and drabs to join him, having tried to shelter in the wood. But like the man on the ground, another crewman had been badly affected by the gas and was coughing and spluttering. Mitchell and his men took out their water canteens and shared them with the three Australians. All took long gulps of water to soothe their dry throats, and dabbed their stinging red eyes with soaked handkerchiefs before putting their masks back on.
‘You two men had better get yourselves to the rear and find an RAP,’ Mitchell said to his two crewmen who were suffering the worst from the gas attack.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said one. With their arms around each other’s shoulders, the pair staggered away to find the nearest regimental aid post.
At this point Captain Brown came up.
‘What do we do now, sir?’ Lieutenant Mitchell asked him.
‘Can’t move without orders,’ Brown firmly replied.
So the tanks and their crews sat and waited for someone in authority to tell them what to do. The gas lifted after a time, and the tank men dispensed with their masks. Their Australian companions followed suit.
Frankie gratefully ripped off his mask. ‘I don’t know how much longer I could have kept that thing on,’ he confessed. Sniffing the air, he added, ‘Seems all right now, Taz.’
Taz nodded warily as he, too, removed his gasmask.
Wide-eyed British soldiers began to drift past, coming from the direction of Villers-Bretonneux. Many hurried along without weapons.
‘What’s happening?’ Captain Brown called to them.
‘The Germans have taken Villers-Bretonneux, sir!’ one man called without stopping.
‘They’ve got flamethrowers!’ said another as he staggered past.
‘A lot of our men have been captured, sir,’ yelled another soldier, halting briefly. ‘The Hun have almost broken through. They’re using tanks! Brutes of things, they are!’
Brown and Mitchell looked at each other in alarm.
Half an hour later Brigadier-General George Grogan, commanding officer of the British Army’s 23rd Brigade, arrived on foot from the rear, accompanied by two privates. Brown and Mitchell told Grogan what the troops retreating from Villers-Bretonneux had told them.
‘I’m going forward to see the situation for myself,’ said Grogan. ‘Brown, you’d better come with me.’
Grogan, Brown and Grogan’s two privates hurried into the path of falling German shells, towards the enemy. Mitchell, who had been left in charge of the tanks, watched as the men disappeared into the fog. ‘I wonder if we’ll ever see them again,’ he said, half to himself.
Byford’s orders from Colonel Whitlam had been to stay with the tanks, so he, Frankie and Taz remained with Mitchell.
Taz looked at Frankie. ‘Who would have thought wars involved so much waiting around?’
Wait around they did, with a grave, apprehensive silence settling on the men at the tanks.
After ten minutes, one of the privates who’d gone forward with the two officers came back, limping badly. His left leg was bleeding from a shrapnel wound. Another ten minutes elapsed before the second private also arrived back at the tanks. He came at the run, with his right arm hanging uselessly by his side. Mitchell sent both men back to the nearest aid post, and continued to wait anxiously for the return of the brigadier-general and the captain. A further twenty minutes passed before the pair appeared, strolling along, chatting, as if they were out for a walk in a park. Unlike the two privates, the officers came back without a scratch on them.
‘What’s the picture like, sir?’ Byford asked the brigadier-general.
‘Not good up there,’ said Grogan, looking grim. ‘We’ve lost a lot of men and we’ve lost ground. But some of our infantry are still holding the trench line between Cachy and Villers-Bretonneux.’ Turning to Captain Brown, he said, ‘I want you fellows to get your tanks over to Cachy as fast as you can. You must hold that trench line at all costs!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brown acknowledged, saluting.
‘I’m going back to HQ to organise support for you,’ said Grogan, before moving off towards the rear, striding away alone and with his head down.
At last, Mitchell and Brown had orders. As Brown and the third tank commander hurried to climb into their machines with their men, Mitchell looked at the three Australians and asked, ‘Can I give you and your lads a lift, Byford?’
Lieutenant Byford thought for a moment. His orders from Colonel Whitlam had been to observe the tanks in action, and he couldn’t do that if he was left behind. ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘Don’t mind if we do.’
‘Climb on top, then,’ said Mitchell, ‘and be sure to jump off as soon as things look like they’re going to get a bit hot.’
Mark IV tanks had never been designed to carry troops on their roofs, but Frankie, Taz and their lieutenant clambered onto Sir Lancelot just the same.
As Frankie took a firm grip on one of two rails that ran along the tank’s roof, he grinned at Taz. ‘There’s a first time for everything, Tazzie boy,’ he said excitedly. ‘Riding on the back of a tank is one of them.’
&nb
sp; Taz nodded grimly and took an equally firm hold.
Meanwhile, Mitchell and his five remaining crewmen took their places inside, closing the hatches. But just as Mitchell ordered the engine to life, the crewman on the crank handle collapsed.
‘Give me a hand here,’ Mitchell said to another crewman.
The unconscious man, whose eyes were red-rimmed and bulging, was carried from the tank and propped up against a tree. An ammonia tablet, supposedly a treatment for gas poisoning, was placed in his mouth by the lieutenant, after which he was left to fend for himself. No one knew whether he would survive the day. But that wasn’t Mitchell’s chief concern now; he had orders to obey.
Because Mitchell’s was a ‘male’ tank, armed with two cannons as well as machine guns, Brown waved for Mitchell to lead off. Being ‘females’, armed only with machine guns, the other two Mark IVs followed. As soon as the engine started, Mitchell got Sir Lancelot underway, with the three Australians lying full-length and clinging to the roof of the machine.
‘It’s like riding on the back of an elephant!’ Taz exclaimed.
‘Into a wall of death!’ Frankie declared.
They would have been even more worried had they known that the designers of the Mark IVs had placed their fuel tanks in the roof. A direct hit on the roof from a shell or bomb would ignite the fuel, turning the tank into a lethal fireball that would incinerate both the trio riding on top and the crew inside.
In their path ahead, German shells were falling in their scores. To Frankie, it seemed impossible that they could pass through that barrage without being hit. It looked impenetrable. But the tank’s commander ordered his driver to take a zigzag course, sending Sir Lancelot lumbering forward at top speed, into the falling shells.
‘Heads down, lads!’ Lieutenant Byford yelled, trying to pull his head into his shoulders as they lay atop the surging metal monster.
Frankie squeezed his eyes shut. Beside him, Taz was looking to the heavens and loudly reciting Psalm 23. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for though art with me –’
Tank Boys Page 7
