Tank Boys

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘Do something like what?’ Frankie replied.

  ‘We can’t stay with the 52nd. We’ve got to get out of here!’

  ‘What, desert?’

  ‘No, not desert, you idiot!’ Taz hauled himself to his feet. ‘Come with me, the pair of you. We’ve got to see the CO.’

  Taz led Frankie and Richard from the tent and across the camp to the old roadside inn that was serving as battalion headquarters. As they arrived, Lieutenant-Colonel Whitlam, the commanding officer of the 52nd Battalion, was coming out the front door, accompanied by a fresh-faced junior officer and a stocky sergeant.

  The three young men immediately came to attention and saluted. Richard had quickly picked up the open-handed salute of the Australians. It was very different to the horizontal hand of the German salute – something, Richard had realised, that would have immediately given him away if he’d used it.

  The colonel returned their salute. ‘It’s Pickles and Dutton, isn’t it?’ he said, recognising the pair.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they returned in unison.

  ‘Glad you two came out of Villers-Bretonneux all right,’ said Whitlam. ‘We lost too many fine young men there, your Lieutenant Blair among them.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they chorused.

  Whitlam looked at Richard. ‘And who’s this?’

  ‘Our mate Archie, sir,’ Taz replied.

  ‘He’s Dutch,’ Frankie quickly added. ‘Well, he was, before he became an Aussie.’

  ‘Can we have a word with you, Colonel?’ Taz asked.

  Whitlam nodded. ‘What’s on your mind, lad?’

  ‘We’d like a transfer, sir,’ said Taz.

  ‘Oh?’ The colonel looked perplexed. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘We heard that the 52nd is going to be abolished, sir,’ Taz continued.

  ‘With all of us split up and sent to other battalions, sir,’ said Frankie.

  ‘Ah,’ the colonel responded, rubbing his chin. ‘Yes, a very sad end for a fine battalion. It’s likely to come about next week. We weren’t going to tell the lads until the last minute – no use prolonging the heartache. Where did you two hear of it?’

  ‘At Boulogne, sir,’ Frankie answered.

  Whitlam raised his eyebrows. ‘Boulogne?’

  ‘News travels fast on the bush telegraph, sir,’ said the sergeant at Colonel Whitlam’s side.

  ‘We were told as we were leaving base camp, sir,’ said Taz. ‘So we were wondering, Frankie and Archie and me, if we could be sent to another battalion together. After all we’ve been through together, it would be a shame to be split up.’

  ‘It’d be criminal!’ Frankie remarked. ‘Sir.’

  Colonel Whitlam nodded. ‘I fully understand what you’re saying, lads.’ He turned to the captain and sergeant with him. ‘Let’s see what you can do for them, shall we?’

  ‘Where are you blokes from?’ the sergeant asked the trio.

  ‘Tasmania,’ Taz replied.

  ‘And Queensland,’ said Frankie. Glancing at Richard, he added, ‘The both of us are, Archie and me.’

  ‘Tassie and Queensland?’ said the sergeant thoughtfully. ‘The 26th is all Queensland and Tassie boys.’

  ‘That’s ideal,’ said Whitlam. ‘Graves, get in touch with 7th Brigade headquarters and see what you can do about getting these three a transfer to the 26th Battalion before we disband.’

  Sergeant Graves nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Taz and Frankie looked at each other and burst into smiles. ‘Thank you, sir,’ they chorused. Looking sideways at Richard, Frankie winked.

  With sweat running down their faces and rifles on their shoulders, Taz, Frankie and Richard made their way along a busy communication trench in single file.

  It was Monday 22 July, a warm summer’s day on the Somme. Two months had passed since Taz and Frankie had asked Lieutenant-Colonel Whitlam for a transfer. As expected, on 16 May the 52nd Battalion had been ignominiously disbanded and its men distributed as reinforcements to other 13th Brigade battalions. The 52nd and the sacrifices of its men had been consigned to history. But just before that took place Taz, Frankie and Richard had been granted their requested transfer.

  Now members of the 26th’s C Company, Taz, Frankie and Richard stuck together like glue – partly because they were mates, and partly because Taz and Frankie were determined to protect Richard’s secret, for his sake and for their own. While they were by Richard’s side to vouch for this youngster with an oddly mixed accent, his story about being a Dutch immigrant to Queensland before the war would never be questioned.

  The 7th Brigade, of which the 26th Battalion was part, had been brought in to replace the 13th Brigade in the trenches of the Villers-Bretonneux sector. Its four battalions had taken it in turns to face the Germans, with two battalions always in the frontline trenches and two in the support trenches behind them. Unlike the depressed mood the trio had left behind in the ranks of the 52nd Battalion, the men of the 26th were upbeat.

  Since the Villers-Bretonneux battle, things had been relatively quiet here, with fighting restricted to nuisance raids. Every day and night, the 7th Brigade sent out small patrols of a dozen men led by an officer to probe the German lines opposite and to take prisoners for questioning. The Germans rarely attempted to mount similar patrols against Australian lines. Their main response came from the air, with their aircraft coming over at dawn most days to drop bombs on Australian lines before being chased away by anti-aircraft fire and the Australian Flying Corps.

  Spared patrol work, life had been pretty placid and safe for the trio from the 52nd Battalion these past two months. The most activity they’d seen had been behind the lines, salvaging discarded equipment lying on the battlefield in the wake of the fierce April battle, and swinging picks as part of a 26th Battalion 200-man party digging deep trenches for telephone lines.

  But now the three of them were worried. They had been summoned to appear before the commanding officer of the 26th, Major James ‘Rocks’ Robinson, at a special parade. Plodding along the communication trenches, they feared their secret had been exposed and that they were about to be punished for their masquerade.

  Arriving at the battalion’s HQ dugout for the parade, they found a sergeant and another nine men from the battalion already lined up in the trench outside the dugout entrance, waiting for the major to join them from his underground quarters. As Taz, Frankie and Richard took their places at the end of the line, Frankie whispered to one of the men standing there. ‘What’s this all about, mate? Is it a punishment parade?’

  ‘Punishment?’ The soldier laughed. ‘Not likely, mate. There’s a special patrol on the go, and we’re all down for it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Frankie looked at Taz and Richard with surprise. ‘A patrol,’ he echoed.

  Taz, leaning close to Richard, whispered, ‘How do you feel about that? Going back over there?’ He inclined his head towards German lines.

  Richard shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Taz.’ What he did know was that he had no desire to fight his fellow Germans. ‘I will have to wait and see, I suppose.’

  ‘Ten-shun!’ bellowed the short, squat sergeant at the head of the line.

  As the dozen men came to attention, Major Robinson emerged from the dugout’s low entrance with his head bowed, then straightened to his full height and looked along the line. The battalion’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant McFarlane, appeared behind him and stood at his shoulder. From inside the dugout came the clacking sound of a typewriter, as a clerk on the HQ staff belted out the final orders for the day’s operations.

  ‘At ease,’ the major called.

  The men in the line stood easy. In the two months they’d been with the 26th, Taz, Frankie and Richard had never laid eyes on their new CO. They now gave him the once-over as he walked along the line, hands clasped behind his back, looking over the dozen men. Robinson was slim, narrow-faced and possessed an intense stare.

  Before the war, Robinson had been a schoolteacher in Brisbane, and many men in the batt
alion felt that his two nicknames stemmed from that time. One of them was ‘Old Uniformity’. Robinson certainly liked his unit run in a uniform manner, and he dressed with surprising neatness for an officer on the battlefield. But ‘Rocks’, his other nickname, seemed the most appropriate. Frankie reckoned the major must have liked rocks when he was a schoolteacher, but Taz had heard that some officers felt that Robinson had rocks in his head because of the brazen operations he often came up with. And he’d just come up with another one.

  ‘Right, gentleman,’ said Robinson, halting and facing the line of men. Sounding like a schoolteacher addressing his students, he went on. ‘Tonight, you’ll be going on a little excursion into No Man’s Land. There’s an abandoned Jerry tank out there called Mephisto.’

  As the major paused to allow this information to sink in, Taz, Frankie and Richard glanced at each other in alarm.

  ‘In April,’ Robinson resumed, ‘the 52nd Battalion briefly took possession of this tank in an orchard at Monument Farm. But ever since our new front line was established just short of the orchard, this Jerry tank has been left sitting out there between the lines. We believe that Jerry has been using Mephisto as a lookout post. And we can’t have that, can we?’

  Smiles appeared on the faces of some of the men in front of him.

  ‘So tonight,’ Robinson continued, ‘we will be bringing that Jerry tank back to our lines.’

  ‘How, sir?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘I hope we don’t have to carry the blinking thing,’ another mumbled.

  ‘You gentlemen are going to take steel cables out there and hook them up to Mephisto,’ the major advised. ‘The other ends will be attached to winches on two carrier tanks from the 1st Gun Carrier Company, which will be waiting near our lines. Those tanks will then drag Mephisto back here. Officers from the Gun Carrier Company and myself have already chosen a route for this, and tonight, before you go, the battalion will have clearing parties out preparing that route.’

  ‘Crikey!’ Frankie exclaimed.

  ‘Sergeant Hanson has hand-picked you men from A, B and C Companies to recover the tank,’ said Robinson. ‘You are men of pluck, he tells me.’ This brought smiles along the line. ‘And I believe that three of you C company men only recently joined us from the 52nd. Furthermore, those three men were the only survivors from the 52nd Battalion platoon that kept Mephisto out of Jerry hands last April.’

  ‘Step forward, those three men!’ bellowed Sergeant Frank Hanson, from the head of the line.

  Taz and Frankie promptly took one step to the front, but Richard hesitated. Taz glared at him and motioned with his head for the German to also step forward, which Richard then did.

  Major Robinson looked at Richard with a frown. ‘Were you there at Mephisto in April or not, man?’

  ‘Yes, I was there, Major,’ Richard replied. ‘I was most certainly with Mephisto in April.’

  ‘Very well then,’ said Robinson, satisfied by the response. ‘Can you men tell me what condition the tank was in when you last saw it? Is it intact?’

  ‘It looked pretty intact to me, sir,’ Taz volunteered. ‘At one point while we were there the Germans got around behind us and set off a demolition charge inside it.’

  Robinson frowned. ‘How much damage did that charge do?’

  ‘Not much damage that I could see, sir. Bits of metal were sticking up from the roof. Other than that, it seemed as solid as a rock.’

  ‘What about the tracks? Were they intact?’

  Taz nodded. ‘As far as I could tell, they were, sir.’

  Robinson was clearly pleased to hear this. ‘Very good. We’ll drag the monster back here by hook or by crook. But if the tracks are in working order, our job will be all the easier.’

  Now Frankie piped up. ‘The tank’s in a blooming great shell crater, sir. It won’t be easy to budge. Can’t we just leave it where it is? It’s not hurting anyone out there.’

  Robinson’s face clouded over. ‘If we don’t grab it, Jerry will,’ he countered. ‘They’ve already recovered one of their tanks from the same area. We don’t want them getting this one too, do we, Lance-Corporal?’ He directed his piercing gaze at Frankie.

  ‘I suppose not, sir,’ Frankie replied with a sigh. He had no desire to risk his skin on such a chancy venture between the lines, especially after his last encounter with Mephisto had resulted in the deaths of almost every member of his platoon. ‘The generals said we had to get it, did they?’

  ‘I’m using my initiative, Lance-Corporal,’ Robinson responded, irritated by Frankie’s impertinence. ‘But the brigade commander, General Wisdom, has approved this operation.’

  ‘And what the major wants, Pickles,’ Sergeant Hanson interjected, ‘he gets!’

  ‘I’m sure resourceful Australians like yourselves will find a way to get the tank out of the crater,’ Robinson remarked dismissively. ‘Sergeant Hanson, brief your men,’ he instructed, before turning on his heel and disappearing into his dugout, closely followed by the intelligence lieutenant.

  ‘Gather round, you blokes,’ called Sergeant Hanson, a Queenslander from Mount Larcom. Taz, Frankie and Richard joined the others in forming a semi-circle in front of Hanson. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. At eleven tonight, just as Jerry is settling down to sleepy-byes, we’re going to set off to pay this tank of theirs a visit, and invite it – very politely, mind – to our lines.’

  One of the men sniggered at this.

  The smile disappeared from Hanson’s face. ‘Assemble back here at ten-thirty. We’ll be going over with fifty rounds of ammo per man. Jerry may not like us taking his little tank away and could put up a bit of resistance. Make sure your .303 has a sling on it – we’ll need our hands free over there. Any questions?’

  ‘What if we can’t get the bleeding thing out of the hole?’ one man asked.

  ‘That’s not an option, mate,’ Hanson firmly replied. ‘The major wants this tank, and we’re going to get it for him. That’s it. Buzz off, all of you. I’ll see you back here at ten-thirty tonight.’

  The group broke up, and Taz, Frankie and Richard walked back to their trench in silence. There, they sank down and sat side by side with their backs against the trench wall.

  ‘Well, ain’t that a turn-up for the books!’ Frankie exclaimed. ‘Sending us back to get flaming Mephisto.’

  ‘Incredible!’ said Richard, not sure what to think about this.

  ‘What do you reckon, Taz?’ Frankie asked.

  Taz, laying his head back and looking up at the hazy sky above, smiled to himself. ‘I think the gods are having a laugh at our expense. That’s what I reckon.’

  The sun hadn’t long gone down when, at 10.30 pm, Sergeant Hanson and his twelve chosen men assembled outside the HQ dugout. Lying on the ground were two lengths of tightly wound steel hawser. Each, when unravelled, would be more than a hundred metres long.

  ‘The cables are a present from the engineers,’ Sergeant Hanson advised. ‘When we move out, I want six men to a hawser.’ With that said, he proceeded to split the party in two.

  Walking along the line, Sergeant Hanson handed out shoulder slings for rifles. Each man fitted this to his weapon before slinging it over one shoulder. That done, the sergeant inspected the party’s equipment, particularly making sure each man had brought his gas-mask, which was contained in the regular bulky canvas container that hung around their necks. Following along behind Hanson, a quartermaster corporal handed each man ten five-bullet clips for his Lee-Enfield, and two Mills bombs.

  Like the others, Taz, Frankie and Richard stuffed magazines and grenades into the canvas pouches strapped to their chests. All three had mixed feelings about the stunt they were about to embark on. Taz was worried about how Richard would react. Frankie’s old fears about being killed had returned. And Richard was numb, not knowing what he would do when he was reunited with Mephisto or if he came face-to-face with German troops.

  Once the ammunition had been distributed and Sergeant Hanson w
as satisfied that his party was ready for action, they were joined by Major Robinson and Lieutenant McFarlane, the intelligence officer.

  ‘Good hunting, gentlemen,’ Robinson said with a tight smile, looking around at the men. ‘Bring back the prize!’

  ‘Right, you lot, let’s be having you,’ said Hanson. ‘A cable to each group. Hoist them up onto your shoulders. Come on, be snappy about it. Let’s go!’

  As six men lifted one length of hawser between them, spreading it out over some ten metres, the other half-a-dozen took up the second hawser and did the same. Taz, Frankie and Richard were the first three in their group.

  ‘Christ! It’s heavy!’ one man complained.

  ‘Who would have thought it’d come to this?’ Frankie said with a grunt of exertion as he took his share of the load. ‘I’ve ended up in a flaming chain gang!’

  An amused smile appeared on Major Robinson’s face. He watched the party depart, with the intelligence officer leading the contingent from the trenches, then returned to his dugout. Lieutenant McFarlane, meanwhile, guided Hanson and his two lines of hawser-bearing men to where two ugly British gun carrier tanks stood, their engines shut down, on the edge of No Man’s Land. Built on the chassis of a Mark I tank, these gun carriers had a flat platform at the front and two small armoured cabs in the rear – one for the driver, the other for the brakeman. Until now, these two machines had been used to salvage British tanks from the battlefield, including Lieutenant Mitchell’s Sir Lancelot in May. Tonight they were standing ready to reel in Mephisto.

  Following the lieutenant’s example, all thirteen men of the recovery party dropped to one knee beside the nearest gun carrier, gratefully dumping their weighty hawsers to the ground. There, they waited as the lieutenant and the sergeant conferred in whispers with a British officer from the Gun Carrier Company.

  Out in front, the low shapes of 26th Battalion men clearing a path for Mephisto could be made out. Lying on their stomachs, they were using entrenching tools and lengths of wood to level the ground. Meanwhile, to both the east and west of their location, artillery could be heard rumbling like distant thunder.