Tank Boys

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘I wouldn’t bother, mate,’ Frankie called, without opening his eyes. ‘There’s no way we’re going to get through this!’

  As the explosions grew closer and closer, and dirt and stones rained down on them, Taz, gritting his teeth and gripping on so tightly that his knuckles were white, resumed reciting the psalm.

  To achieve the zigzag, two different crewmen – the driver and the gearsman – had to cooperate. In these British tanks, while the driver controlled the vehicle’s speed, the gearsman, sitting in the back, operated gears which activated the left and right tracks. To turn left, the driver had to yell to the gearsman to engage the left track only. Both men had to work very closely for the zigzag to work.

  At their top speed of six kilometres per hour, first Mitchell’s tank, then the two machines following behind, pushed into the barrage, heading one way, then veering in the other direction. To the amazement of Frankie and Taz, the zigzag worked. All three British tanks emerged on the other side of the screen of shells, miraculously untouched.

  ‘Amazing!’ Frankie exclaimed, opening his eyes.

  Beside him, Taz was smiling. ‘We live to fight another day,’ he said with relief.

  Suddenly, a British soldier jumped up from a trench ten metres in front of Sir Lancelot and began frantically waving his rifle back and forth, signalling the tank to stop. When the lumbering Mark IV came to a halt, the lone soldier ran up to it.

  Lieutenant Mitchell opened the steel flap in front of him. ‘What’s going on, private?’ he called down.

  ‘Watch out, sir! Hun tanks!’ the soldier yelled.

  ‘Where?’ Mitchell responded. But the soldier had already dived back into the trench.

  Up on the tank’s roof, Lieutenant Byford also heard the warning. ‘Where are the devils?’ he asked no one in particular. Then, peering to the east, he saw movement. Three hundred metres away, a metal monster was edging forward, followed by waves of German infantry. This was Nixe, an A7V of Colonel Kessel’s Gruppe 3. Sir Lancelot was the first British tank to come face-to-face with a German tank on the battlefield. Ever.

  Taz saw Nixe too. He pointed it out to Frankie, who, almost as if he had received a mild electric shock, felt a thrill of excitement run through his body.

  ‘Crikey!’ Frankie exclaimed. ‘Now we’ll see a fight to remember!’

  ‘Jerry tank three hundred yards to our front!’ Byford yelled, hoping that Mitchell had heard him, before turning to Taz and Frankie. ‘Time we made ourselves scarce, lads!’ he said, nodding towards the nearest trench.

  Frankie and Taz didn’t need to be told a second time. Just as Sir Lancelot lurched forward to resume its advance, the three Australians slid off its back and dashed to the trench, jumping in among surprised soldiers of the British 23rd Brigade already occupying the hole in the ground.

  ‘Ne’er fear, mates!’ said Frankie, in greeting. ‘Australia’s here.’

  Sir Lancelot was advancing towards the German tanks at an oblique angle. While the A7V’s lone cannon pointed out of its nose, the two big guns in Mitchell’s tank protruded from its sides, meaning that Sir Lancelot had to be partly side-on to the enemy to allow one of those guns to fire at the approaching German tank. So, with the two female Mark IVs following, Sir Lancelot advanced towards Nixe diagonally one way, then the other, keeping up the zigzag as it threaded its way through trenches and stretches of barbed wire, always with one six-pound gun pointing at the German tank.

  Lieutenant Byford, popping his head above the trench parapet to watch the tank battle unfold, removed his binoculars from their case. ‘You might want to watch this encounter, lads,’ he said to Frankie and Taz. ‘This is history in the making.’

  While the British soldiers around them kept their heads down, Taz and Frankie joined Byford in looking over the parapet to take in the battle.

  ‘We are here to observe, after all,’ said Taz.

  ‘Fix your bayonets, the pair of you,’ said Byford. ‘We may have German company before long.’

  ‘Just so long as that Jerry tank doesn’t come our way,’ Frankie responded as he and Taz slid bayonets from the scabbards on their sides and fixed them in place on the end of their rifles.

  ‘Make that “tanks”, plural,’ said Byford, now with the binoculars to his eyes. ‘There are two more of the devils coming up behind the first tank.’

  ‘Gawd help us!’ Frankie groaned.

  Sure enough, a little way behind the first, Frankie and Taz spied two other A7Vs crawling over the landscape. The fourth A7V of Gruppe 3 had experienced engine trouble and broken down not long after crossing the British lines. Now, it would be three British tanks against three German tanks.

  ‘Come on, the Tank Corps!’ said Taz, watching Sir Lancelot and its two companions roll forward.

  Sir Lancelot was the first to open fire. With a boom, its left gun fired. The shell flew well past Nixe, which made no reply. Lieutenant Mitchell’s gunner quickly reloaded, then fired again. This time, his shell exploded just to the right of the target. Still, the German panzer’s big gun remained silent.

  Then, the watching Australians saw flame spurt from the muzzles of several of the A7V’s Maxim machine guns, as the German tank opened fire at last. The right side of Sir Lancelot was suddenly pelted with a hail of bullets.

  ‘Jerry is using armour-piercing bullets,’ Byford calmly commentated, his binoculars fixed to his eyes.

  ‘Do our tanks use armour-piercing bullets, sir?’ Taz asked.

  Byford shook his head.

  As more bullets rattled against the armoured side, some penetrated it, severely wounding one of Mitchell’s machine-gunners. In search of cover, Sir Lancelot veered away and ploughed towards the nearest large shell crater. Down into the crater it slew. There, it came to a halt. The lip of the massive crater was high enough to temporarily protect much of the Mark IV from German fire. Now Nixe’s machine guns turned on the two Mark IVs that had been following Sir Lancelot.

  After a couple of minutes, with dirt flying from beneath its tracks, and its engine straining, Sir Lancelot turned and came up and over the edge of the shell crater, heading northeast, away from the German tank and towards the village of Cachy. As the British tank rocked and rolled over the uneven ground, like a boat on the ocean, Sir Lancelot’s left gunner tried to get a bead on Nixe, which had turned to follow it. The Mark IV’s gun boomed. The shell landed thirty metres past the target. Again Sir Lancelot fired, only for this second shell to hit the ground well in front of Nixe.

  ‘Fire straight, you buggers!’ Frankie bawled in frustration.

  ‘Where are our other tanks going?’ Taz called, pointing behind them.

  Byford swung his binoculars around to see the rear ends of the other two Mark IVs. Battered by shells and machine-gun rounds from Nixe and the two other A7Vs, the British tanks were limping away, back the way they’d come. Machine-gun bullets had penetrated their sides while cannon shells had created gaping holes. With crewmen wounded and their tanks badly shot up, Brown and the other British commander were retreating while they still could. The German tanks were winning the battle. And Sir Lancelot was on its own.

  Nixe and its two A7V companions further back were giving chase to Sir Lancelot and, despite their tortoise-like speed, were gradually catching up to the British tank. Machine-gun rounds from Nixe again splattered Sir Lancelot’s armour. Lieutenant Mitchell now made a momentous decision – to fight, not run. Sir Lancelot slowed and turned in the direction of Nixe, which was coming up on its left. As Sir Lancelot bucked along, its left gunner took a sighting on Nixe and fired. His shell exploded just in front of the German tank, sending smoke, shrapnel, earth and rock into the air.

  The British gunner swiftly reloaded, and Lieutenant Mitchell boldly ordered his driver to stop. This would present the Germans with a stationary target, but it would also give Mitchell’s gunner the best chance of hitting the enemy. The left gunner took aim, then fired. This time, his shot hit the target, exploding against Nixe’s cupola,
and Nixe immediately ground to a halt.

  ‘A direct hit!’ Lieutenant Byford exclaimed, sounding relieved.

  Beside him, Frankie and Taz cheered.

  Once more Sir Lancelot fired. This time there was a puff of white smoke from the front of the German tank as this shell hit it squarely on its thickly armoured nose. Now, Sir Lancelot’s gunner took great care to aim and fire a third time. This latest shell hit the flank of Nixe. The blast was so powerful that, although it didn’t penetrate the A7V’s thick armour, it pushed the tank sideways into a trench, where the vehicle sat at a precarious angle.

  ‘Got the devil!’ Byford cried with delight.

  Nixe’s forward and rear hatches opened, and out poured its eighteen crewmen. Seeing this, one of Sir Lancelot’s machine-gunners turned his weapon their way and let rip with a full belt, cutting down five of Nixe’s unarmed crew as they ran. The remaining German crewmen succeeded in reaching cover.

  Frankie sank below the parapet. ‘Crikey.’ It was the first time in this war that Frankie and Taz had seen Germans killed right before their eyes. As exhilarating as the sight of the German tank being knocked out had been to Frankie, the fate of the five crewmen was sobering.

  ‘They didn’t have much of a chance,’ Taz remarked.

  ‘That’s war,’ said a matter-of-fact Lieutenant Byford, who’d witnessed scenes more terrible than this.

  With Nixe neutralised, Mitchell’s crew turned their attention to the two A7Vs crawling up behind the knocked-out tank, and the waves of infantry following in their wake. As the second of Mitchell’s six-pounders poured shells onto the German foot soldiers, felling many and scattering the rest, the gunner who’d scored the hits on Nixe took aim on the nearest of the two tanks and fired. His sighting shot fell a little short. His next shot fell closer, and the third landed right beside the A7V.

  ‘Will you look at that!’ said Lieutenant Byford with surprise.

  The leading German tank halted, then began reversing away. Tank number three promptly did the same, and within minutes the two monsters had left the field of battle to the victorious Sir Lancelot.

  Frankie looked at Taz and, grinning, shook his friend by the hand. ‘How about that, mate? We won!’ he said, hardly able to believe it.

  ‘Don’t speak too soon,’ Taz replied, his ears pricking up, and looking to the grey sky.

  The noise of a motor of a different kind met their ears. The three of them just had time enough to realise that a shape approaching Sir Lancelot fast and low from above was an aircraft, and to recognise the black crosses beneath its wings, before something fell from beneath it. The plane passed overhead at little more than thirty metres with a howl of its engine.

  The next thing they knew, there was a loud explosion and the nose of Sir Lancelot rose up into the air until the tank seemed to stand on end. The Mark IV crashed back to earth then continued crawling along as if nothing had happened. Apart from shaking up everyone and everything aboard, the German bomb, which had detonated directly in front of the tank, had caused no damage.

  ‘The luck is with us,’ Lieutenant Byford remarked to himself.

  But as he spoke, the tank – its driver disoriented by the bomb blast – suddenly slewed down to the left, sliding sideways into a large shell crater.

  Applying full throttle, the driver tried to get the tank back up onto level ground. Instead, the Mark IV slipped further to the left until it was entirely in the crater. As the three Australians watched, Sir Lancelot’s driver gunned the engine again, and the front of the tank rose up the crater wall. Just as the massive machine sat at a crazy angle, with its nose pointing skyward, the engine died. German shells began whining overhead, followed by the nearby crump of their detonations.

  ‘It’s a sitting duck out there!’ Frankie moaned.

  Sir Lancelot was put into reverse gear and run back down into the shell hole, where it came to rest. When the crank handle was turned, the Daimler power plant coughed back into life, bringing a cheer from Frankie and Taz. They watched as the machine crept from the crater, almost crab-like, before coming to a halt with its engine turning over reassuringly.

  ‘Jerry’s coming again,’ said Lieutenant Byford. Studying the battlefield directly in front of them through his binoculars, he saw hundreds of German infantry forming up for an attack.

  Taz, from the corner of his eye, saw rapid movement to their left. ‘Reinforcements arriving!’ he cried with relief. His heart was warmed by the sight of seven British Whippet tanks surging onto the battlefield and charging towards the assembling German troops.

  ‘Aha!’ Frankie exclaimed. ‘Now Jerry’s in for a pasting!’

  Whippets, like the British dogs after which they were named, were small and nimble. With a crew of justthree – a commander, a driver and a gunner – they weighed fourteen tonnes and were armed with four machine guns. The Whippets’ two engines were the same kind that drove London’s double-decker buses, and each drove one of the tank’s tracks in the same way that the German A7Vs used an engine for each track.

  The seven charging Whippets caused carnage among the German infantry, cutting them down with their Hotchkiss machine guns and rolling over wounded men and those too slow to run. Lieutenant Byford calculated that, in a matter of minutes, the Whippets killed four hundred German foot soldiers, whose rifles were useless against tanks.

  But just as the little tanks seemed to be breaking up the German attack, a shell landed right beside the leading Whippet. Then another, and another. Byford scanned the field until he saw a hulking object lumbering from the direction of Villers-Bretonneux. It was another German A7V, about a thousand metres away, and it was firing rapidly at the Whippets.

  Lieutenant Byford was not to know it, but this German tank was Siegfried, and its commander was Lieutenant Wilhelm Biltz. Sent by Colonel Kessel to support the two battalions of infantry forming up for the attack, slow, deliberate Biltz had arrived too late to save his four hundred countrymen from slaughter, but he was not too late to punish the British Whippet tanks. And Biltz, holder of the Iron Cross, was not daunted by the fact that he was taking on eight British tanks – the Whippets and Sir Lancelot.

  As the Australians watched, Siegfried’s cannon scored a direct hit on a Whippet, which erupted in flame and came to an abrupt halt. As the other Whippets turned to face the threat, Siegfried’s gunner fired again and again, soon to be joined by a 77 mm German artillery piece in the distance, which depressed its sights and also opened fire. Within minutes, four Whippets lay burning on the battlefield. Their crews had either died in their machines or tumbled out, to be taken prisoner by the German infantry.

  The three remaining British Whippets tried to fight it out with Siegfried, but their machine-gun bullets bounced off the A7V. Meanwhile, even though Siegfried’s cannon missed the trio, its Maxim guns raked its smaller adversaries, filling their armoured skins with holes. Unable to even dent the German monster, the three surviving Whippets turned and fled west. One, its turret riddled with bullets, rolled past Sir Lancelot in its desperate retreat.

  Siegfried then turned towards Sir Lancelot, which in turn advanced to meet the A7V. Like armoured knights in slow motion, the pair of steel juggernauts slowly bore down upon one another. As soon as the German tank was within range, Mitchell’s left gunner fired a ranging shot. It landed well short. Siegfried replied at once, its main gun letting off three rounds in rapid succession. The trio of German 57 mm shells burst perilously close to Sir Lancelot’s side, showering the Mark IV with earth and shrapnel.

  ‘He’s good,’ Byford said to himself, referring to the German tank’s gunner. ‘Damned good.’

  ‘Bugger him!’ Frankie added.

  The next German shell could spell the end of Sir Lancelot, and Lieutenant Mitchell knew it. He ordered his tank to veer left and retreat. At that moment, a shell hit Sir Lancelot’s right side. Inexplicably, the British tank began to go around and around in circles.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing, man?’ Byfo
rd mumbled, as if Mitchell could hear him.

  ‘Their right track’s blotto, sir,’ Taz said grimly.

  Sure enough, the track had been broken in two by the German shell and had unwound. Its ends flapped uselessly. With only the left track working, the British tank could only go around in narrow circles and would most likely become the target for every German gun in the vicinity. Sir Lancelot shuddered to a halt, and Lieutenant Mitchell ordered his crew to bail out. Hatches opened, and out into the open scrambled Mitchell’s men, one of them carrying the wounded machine-gunner on his back. Mitchell himself was the last man to leave Sir Lancelot.

  With the air outside alive with bullets from Siegfried, Mitchell and his men flung themselves to the ground and hugged the earth. As soon as the Maxim gunners paused to reload, Mitchell jumped up. ‘Follow me!’ he yelled, leading the way in a crouching run towards the trench from where the Australians watched. ‘Mind your bayonets, you men!’ he yelled, as he leapt into the trench.

  Lieutenant Byford looked at the tank commander who now crouched beside him. Like his men, Mitchell’s face was gaunt and streaked black with cordite and sweat, while his eyes were red from exhaustion. Byford produced a wry smile. ‘An interesting morning’s tournament, Mitchell?’ he said. ‘Advantage Germans, with set point to play?’

  ‘Oh, hello there, Byford,’ said Lieutenant Mitchell. ‘An interesting morning, indeed,’ he said, brushing down his uniform. ‘Thirty all, I’d say. The game’s not over yet.’

  To Frankie and Taz, it looked like the German tank was going to advance on their trench, followed by what survived of the German infantry. But the luck that had been with them all morning stayed with them.

  ‘Will you look at that!’ said Frankie in astonishment.

  Siegfried was backing away. Lieutenant Biltz’s machine-gunners had used up all their ammunition. But more importantly, after almost six hours of fighting, Siegfried was close to running out of fuel. Rather than become stranded on the battlefield, Lieutenant Biltz decided to withdraw to refuel and rearm. And the German infantry, without the tank to support their advance, also pulled back.