The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  The coming assault was part of a simultaneous offensive with the French in a renewed attempt to destroy the German Army, which had also sustained heavy losses. Haig was gambling on breaking through to Bapaume with no reserves save tired troops. His attack would pivot on Gen Sir Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army on the left wing. The main thrust would be delivered by the Fourth Army between Morval and Le Sars, with a supporting push by the French to the south. The few tanks to be committed assumed an importance greater than their numbers or untried performance warranted, but the surprise element remained, for what it was worth on this scale.

  Rawlinson had initially submitted a scheme which called for a night assault under a full moon to protect his tanks from artillery and to prevent the enemy from getting a good sighting of them. The machines would be withdrawn before dawn. The shock and uncertainty as to what had hit them and what its powers were would thus cause maximum alarm and despondency among the Germans. However, the C-in-C rejected the plan as impracticable and lacking boldness.

  The daylight attack was confirmed for dawn on Friday 15 September. Rawlinson’s primary objectives were the villages of Morval, Les Boeufs, Gueudecourt and Flers. The 42 tanks assigned to him would work in threes to destroy strong points while accompanying infantry rushed the intervening sections of trench. As soon as a breakthrough was achieved the cavalry would race through with other arms along the line Morval–Bapaume. Gough’s army with eight tanks would cooperate and take Courcelette, among other objectives.

  Lieutenant colonels Bradley and Elles attended the planning conferences on 10 and 13 September with Rawlinson and his Corps commanders. Bradley was handicapped by his junior rank, the restricted scope of his command, his ignorance of the conduct of operations and unfamiliarity with the terrain. He said little. His responsibilities were administrative, in liaison with the units to which his force was attached. Theoretically it fell to Maj Allen Holford-Walker and Maj Frank Summers, his Company commanders, to agree tactics with their opposite numbers in the infantry. In practice, because the tanks were to operate in small battle groups of three, that liaison was more often between individual tank commanders and the infantry units they were to support.

  Possibly for security reasons, Swinton’s detailed paper Notes on the Employment of Tanks was not circulated below Senior Staff level at GHQ. It is remarkable that no exception was made for Elles who was now its tank specialist and was shortly to be appointed to command the Heavy Section in France. He claimed he first saw the Notes late in 1918.

  Fourth Army issued its Instructions for the Employment of ‘Tanks’ on the 11th. All approach movements would be by night. Aeroplanes were to overfly the area to blanket the sound of engines on the three nights preceding the attack. The machines would assemble on X/Y night 1 mile behind the start line, moving on to it on Y/Z night. At 0600hrs on Z day they would move off to reach first objectives 5 minutes ahead of the infantry, who would follow under a creeping barrage leaving a fire-free lane 100yd wide for each column of tanks. The stationary barrage of heavy and field artillery would lift off the first objectives several minutes ahead of the arrival of the tanks. After clearing up there the tanks were to move on to prearranged positions to act as strongpoints against counter-attack while the infantry regrouped before repeating the sequence under a covering barrage for the second objective. For subsequent advances without artillery support the tanks were to precede the infantry by half an hour – a very dangerous proposition in the light of later experience. The machines needed close infantry support at all times for spotting artillery positions, target opportunities, gathering prisoners and holding newly taken ground.

  At 5pm on Y/Z day the written orders were cancelled and tank commanders were rebriefed verbally. They and their crews were already near exhaustion from days of intensive preparation and lack of sleep, aggravated by their close proximity to the artillery which was delivering a three-day bombardment. Each man was issued with a hard leather helmet shaped like half a rugby ball, a pair of goggles, a revolver, two gas masks, field dressing kit, haversack, water bottle and iron rations for two days. The tanks’ already narrow gangways became choked with more drums of engine oil and grease, a spare machine gun and four barrels, 33,000 rounds of SAA in the female types, 30 tins of food, 16 loaves, and for some, a basket of carrier pigeons. There was little rest and less sleep again that night as the bombardment increased in intensity. The tanks moved out at zero hour on the 15th beneath a crescendo of covering fire into a thin ground mist and the promise of a fine day. Of the 49 machines employed, 32 had reached their starting points and 18 saw action. Nine of these kept ahead of the infantry and caused the enemy much damage. The other nine got away after overcoming various problems – although they never caught up with the infantry they did valuable work mopping up strongpoints. The remainder suffered mechanical failures or became ditched in the expanse of interlocking shell holes and lines of crumbling trenches.

  Battle conditions were hellish for the tank crews. When the early machines were fully closed up, vision was limited to the commander’s periscope and narrow double glass prisms. These soon shattered as the Maxims raked them with fire. The prisms were replaced on Mk IV tanks by steel plates pricked with small holes. The driver kept his flap ajar as long as possible to see the ground beneath and just ahead of the machine’s front horns. The crew suffered unremitting noise from the exposed and unsilenced engine, the gears shrieking and grinding through their straight-cut teeth, the explosive fire of the tank’s guns and the ‘harsh tapping’ of MG bullets striking the armour. All communication was by signs. The air, already fouling with petrol and exhaust fumes, thickened with cordite smoke. Light from four small festoon lamps dimmed in the haze. The wrenching violence of sudden lurches was another hazard, especially for the gunners whose backs were inches from the hot engine, their boots skidding on spent cartridge cases rolling across the heaving floor. Cartridge-case deflectors and bags were installed a year later. The gunlayers on the 6-pdrs worked their guns without elevating and traversing wheels. Instead they gripped a stanchion with their left hand to steady themselves while swinging the gun via a crutch in their right armpit, and their free hand on a pistol grip. They became expert shots on the move.

  Bullet splash was a hazard peculiar to the tanks. When standard issue rifle and machine-gun bullets hit armour, their lead cores flattened and became molten, the resultant ‘splash’ entering the hull through the slightest crack as a super-hot spray of atomized shrapnel. Entry points included the knife-thin gaps surrounding loophole and vision slit covers, and the junction of sponson with hull where severe stresses tended to open the felt-packed joint to a crack of daylight. Concentrated Maxim fire could so hammer a section of plate as to cause its internal face to spall, throwing off hot steel fragments and leaving a characteristic rank smell of burned paint. Splash lodged under the skin of face and hands as black pinpricks, emerging weeks later, and commanders and gunners were particularly at risk of being blinded. Various forms of face shield were issued later – principally steel goggles with inadequate vision slits and a square of chain mail beneath to protect nose, mouth and throat – but most men soon discarded them. Hull exteriors could quite literally become shot-blasted, as Lt Henry Williamson, an infantry supplies officer, confirmed to his father in spring 1917: ‘My experience of the Hindenburg line is that it is bloody awful. One of our tanks that did come back shined like hell from bullets but the bloke inside was mad.’2 Yet in spite of all, if any crewman had a fleeting moment to consider his position he thanked God he was not outside with the infantry.

  The most notable tank exploit of the day involved D17 ‘Dinnaken’ of Summers’ D Company. The male tank commanded by Lt Stuart Hastie was to accompany D9 and D14, advancing some 1.5 miles to Flers village in support of 41st Division before moving on to attack Gueudecourt. The three had barely moved off at 06.20 when 2nd Lt G.F. Court’s D14 tail-dived irretrievably into a crumbling support trench. In manoeuvring to get ahead to secure a tow cable, D9 with
2nd Lt Victor Huffam slid against the ditched machine and they locked sponsons. Hastie’s driver, Pte Wescombe, got across and they pressed on alone beneath a heavy barrage. When the tail wheels were damaged crossing no-man’s-land they were lifted clear on the hydraulics, steering then becoming a matter of individual track braking. D17 reached Flers accompanied by men of the 122nd and 124th Infantry Brigades, much reduced from enemy fire and now sustaining losses on the heavily wired outskirts of the village. The tank flattened a path through the entanglement and stopped astride the trench behind, enfilading it with MG before rolling on into the village with a badly knocking engine. Some 300 infantry accompanied the tank, moving house to house under continuing friendly and hostile shelling while D17 attempted to get enough elevation for its guns to dislodge snipers in the upper windows. Stick bombs had no effect on the hull. After further destruction of enemy MG positions, the tank withdrew under heavy shelling. The engine failed soon afterwards and D17 took a direct hit on a track. The crew bailed out and eventually got back to base.

  The other two tanks of Hastie’s half-section, D9 and D14, were recovered overnight and were the only ones to fight the next day. They were to support troops of the New Zealand regiment attacking in the direction of Gueudecourt. Huffam’s D9 shot up numbers of Germans in shell holes before, to their horror, the crew saw Court’s D14 engulfed in exploding shells. As D9 continued its advance the prismatics and telescopes were shattered, the splinters blinding L/Cpl Archer, the driver. Both port-side gunners were killed as a shell or armour-piercing bullets penetrated the hull. Huffam lost consciousness when another shell hit. When he came round he found L/Cpl Harry Sanders, the relief driver, very badly wounded in the legs. The other four surviving crew, all injured or in shock, had crawled out. Two were sent back for help. Huffam followed after dressing Sanders’ wounds, dragging him by the belt from hole to hole across several hundred yards of fire-swept ground. All in D14 were dead or dying.3 The courage and achievements of this and the other small battle groups won respect for the Heavy Section and its machines.

  An RFC observer had watched overhead as D17 rolled through Flers. He scribbled a report and dropped it above the British lines. ‘Tank followed by cheering multitude marching through Flers.’4 It was an exaggeration but the sense was clear. GHQ released the message together with guarded information on the tanks. The story electrified the press and raced around the world. ‘A tank is walking up the High Street of Flers with the British Army cheering behind’ was typical of the accounts. Other headlines at home read:

  Battle Cars That Charge Trenches. Britain’s Wonderful New ‘Landship’ Weapon.

  How Our New Forts On Wheels Made Huns Run Like Rabbits.

  Our New Weapons That Eat Up Houses – ‘The Tanks’.

  Tanks Cause ‘Indescribable Demoralisation’.

  Tanks Take Ditches Like Kangaroos.

  Huns Cry ‘Unfair Butchery’.

  Like Toads of Vast Size.

  His Majesty’s Land Navy.

  A few weeks later the Amsterdam correspondent of The Times forwarded a German despatch from the Western Front correspondent of the Düsseldorfer Generalanzeiger headed ‘The Devil’s Chariots’. It graphically described the shock effect of the first tanks on the German defenders:

  [As they] looked towards the English the blood froze in their veins as two mysterious monsters came creeping over the crater fields… They have learned not to fear man, but there was something approaching which the human brain, with tremendous mechanical powers, had fitted out for a devil’s trick, a mystery which oppressed and shackled the powers because one could not comprehend it with understanding – a fatality against which one seemed helpless. One stared and stared as if paralysed.

  The monster approached slowly, hobbling, moving from side to side, rocking and pitching, but it came nearer. Nothing obstructed it; a supernatural force seemed to drive it onwards. Someone in the trenches cried ‘the devil comes’, and that word ran down the line like lightning. Suddenly tongues of fire leapt out of the armoured skins of the iron caterpillar, shells whistled over our heads, and a terrible concert [from] a machine gun orchestra filled the air. The mysterious creature had surrendered its secret, and sense returned with it, and toughness and defiance, and the English waves of infantry surged up behind the devil’s chariot.5

  Lacking photographs, the press ran shots of armoured cars and Holt crawlers, while art departments had a field day creating visual impressions of the machines. None approached reality, illustrations tending either to be comic or wildly juggernaut. The first photograph to appear in any British newspaper cost £5,000 – coincidentally the price of a Mk I tank. It filled the front page of the Daily Mirror on 22 November 1916 under the banner headline: ‘HUSH, HUSH’ – A TANK GOES “GALUMPHANT” INTO ACTION ON THE WESTERN FRONT.

  Swinton arrived at Haig’s headquarters late on Z day, 15 September. The C-in-C received him cordially and thanked him, saying that although the tanks had not achieved all that was hoped, many lives had been saved by them and he wanted five times as many. Stern joined Swinton next day, later recalling Haig’s words to them both: ‘We have had the greatest victory since the battle of the Marne. We have taken more prisoners and more territory, with comparatively few casualties. This is due to the tanks. Wherever the tanks advanced we took our objectives, and where they did not advance we failed… Go back and make as many more tanks as you can. We thank you.’6

  The reaction from his Staff was more subdued. The initial prejudices of many, including senior commanders, hardened after 15 September. Gen Gough’s views were particularly damning. A ‘cavalry’ mentality prevailed which derided the comic appearance and obvious practical shortcomings of the still primitive machines. Adm Bacon happened to be at GHQ on other business when Haig asked him as an informed outsider to inspect the machines and report his opinion. Bacon found the tanks virtually unsteerable, dangerously badly ventilated and excessively noisy. He told Haig they were practically useless in their present state, advising that all should be sent home for alteration while spreading a report that they were a failure. When an improved fleet was ready, 500 should be thrown into a single concerted offensive. Bacon said he was convinced they would walk clean through the German defences. He thought Haig agreed.7

  Whigham convened a policy conference at the War Office on 19 and 20 September. He was joined by Bird, Swinton, Brough and Butler from GHQ. Butler led with proposals for expanding the Heavy Section as ordered by Haig. It would be organized into five brigades of 216 tanks each; a brigade to comprise three wings, each of three companies, 24 tanks per company. An officer would be appointed to command the tanks in France, and a separate officer was to command the training units at home and the overall administration. Stern’s organization would not only build the machines but test them as well. (The army regretted this later, realizing the dangers of letting a supply department approve its own work.) In noting that the French were building 800 light tanks, the conference agreed that:

  … the existing order for tanks to be completed without diminution of output, and a supplementary order for 1,000 tanks of same type to be placed. Certain improvements in design to be introduced as and when possible so as not to delay the present rate of output… A meeting has been arranged in Paris … to effect complete collaboration between French and British designers with a view to a new type of tank embodying the best points of both British and French designs and all other practicable improvements. The deliberations of this [Anglo-French] Committee are not intended, however, to influence in any way the continuance of the present output of British tanks, including the additional order referred to. [Author’s emphasis]8

  The subsequent passage of the notorious ‘1,000-tank order’ was accompanied by misunderstanding, mistrust and lack of direction. It was first confirmed, then cancelled, and the cancellation was itself overridden by the Secretary of State for War. The episode was glossed over at the time and was seriously misrepresented later in the official history of the MoM,
presumably to avoid embarrassment all round. How and precisely why it unfolded has puzzled historians ever since, including Capt Basil Liddell Hart in the preparation of his masterly history, The Tanks. The author has seen contemporary military and Ministry papers which were not open to inspection then; they reveal the distrust of the new weapon at GHQ and Stern’s growing isolation from the High Commands in London and France.

  The hiatus began with disagreement between GHQ and the War Office as to what they had just decided. This was compounded by a wall of silence surrounding Stern’s actions. Two days after the conference Butler told Elles that a joint meeting of English and French engineers would design a ‘supertank’ embodying the best of the machines of both nations. He added, incorrectly, ‘An order has already been placed for 1,000 of these when the design is approved.’9 When Butler received draft minutes of the conference he disputed them, writing to Whigham in London on 25 September that the request from GHQ for 1,000 tanks was not for the ‘same type’ but for an entirely new Anglo-French design which would start production in four or five months’ time. Until then, he said, a continuation order ‘not necessarily for 1,000’ was to be given to maintain current production.10 Whigham did not wait on Butler’s reply before authorizing a production order which was sent to the Ministry on the 26th.