by John Taylor
After half an hour’s slow running, the tanks swung across a road. Like every other road on that fateful night, it was a solid mass of slow-moving traffic. The thousands of empty gun-emplacements would not still be empty at zero! As they went forward the night was stealthily alive with chinks of harness and rumble of wheels, and everywhere they passed groups of men busy with mysterious activities. Occasionally a star-shell floated in the distant air, its light revealing that the country was full of men and horses; then darkness closed down again, and only their stealthy noises betrayed their presence.12
The infantry were also moving up, as the Tank Corps staff officer Captain Evan Charteris discovered when he drove to the 1st Tank Brigade wireless station near Metz-en-Couture, a few miles behind the front line.
When we got back to the motor, we could hear the tramp of men descending the road we had just passed over. Presently a section of the night seemed to be advancing slowly towards us, an indistinguishable mass of the darkness; they came at a pace which just on the active side of standing still. As they passed us we learned that they were a Highland battalion, part of the 51st Division … None of them spoke, and their silence, the weight and slowness of their tread, and the solemnity of their passing by, bore such an implication of fate, and were shrouded with so much mystery by the night, that one felt as if one were hailing men no longer of this world.13
* * *
Meanwhile, Deborah and the other tanks of D Battalion continued their laborious progress, following white tapes laid by the reconnaissance officers to guide them towards the front line. The occasional chatter of machine guns now sounded very close in the darkness as they picked their way across the British support trenches, with infantry advancing in the open around them.
Some time after midnight, Major William Watson met up with D Battalion’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel William Kyngdon, and together they paid a final visit to the headquarters of the infantry battalions they were working with. Watson observed that ‘the trenches were packed with Highlanders, and it was with difficulty that we made our way through them’.14 After this Kyngdon went off to the infantry brigade headquarters in Trescault, where he would await the start of the attack.15
Some time between 4.30 and 5.30 am, the silence was shattered by a sudden bombardment away to their left, in the direction of Havrincourt.16 Second Lieutenant Macintosh described how ‘trench-mortars barked viciously, machine-guns took up the affray, and five-nines might be heard whining across, to crump methodically in the little village away to the left. What did it mean? Had the Boche heard? Did he suspect, or was it merely a case of nerves?’17 The shelling nearly caused disaster for 5th Bn Gordon Highlanders, one of the units attacking with D Battalion. Their commander told how the bombardment ‘caught many of our fellows as they were waiting in the open at the starting-point. I feared … this might seriously affect the whole scheme, as we had a number killed and wounded. Luckily the bombardment stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the situation – as far we were concerned – was saved. Whether this little attention had been due to suspicions which their captures of the night before had aroused, or whether it was merely an ordinary “strafe” may never be explained.’18 In fact the Germans were very much on the alert after the warning of an impending attack, and the bombardment was their response to a report that barbed wire was being cut in preparation for the expected raid on Havrincourt. They now assumed that any threat had been dealt with, and the attackers were able to resume their vigil and await the coming of dawn.
Also waiting anxiously were the crews of D Battalion, who had now reached their starting positions in No Man’s Land. Out in front were the six wire-crushing tanks from No. 11 Company which would lead the advance, while 150 yards behind them the remaining eighteen or so tanks of Nos. 10 and 11 Companies were drawn up in a long line abreast, each with their accompanying groups of infantry. Further back, just behind the British front line, were the twelve tanks of No. 12 Company including Deborah, ready to go forward in the second wave half-an-hour after zero.19
Unseen on either side of them in the mist and darkness, a continuous wall of men and machines extended for six miles (or ten kilometres) along the entire British front – a total of 378 fighting tanks, with tens of thousands of infantrymen behind them and cavalrymen moving into position further back, and 1,000 guns hidden in the woods and valleys, and the aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps preparing to take off from their airfields at the first glimmer of dawn. Incredible though it seems, this whole vast army had been brought into position without the enemy having the slightest warning, beyond what they had gleaned from their prisoners.
In the sector to be attacked by D Battalion, Major Watson described the scene ten minutes before zero hour: ‘At 6.10 A.M. the tanks were in their allotted positions, clearly marked out by tapes which Jumbo had laid earlier in the night … I was standing on the parados of a trench. The movement at my feet had ceased. The Highlanders were ready with fixed bayonets. Not a gun was firing, but there was a curious murmur in the air. To right of me and to left of me in the dim light were tanks – tanks lined up in front of the wire, tanks swinging into position, and one or two belated tanks climbing over the trenches.’20 For once the weather was on their side, and a thin mist concealed the attackers from view as night began to fade to the palest grey.
For some of the tank crews, exhaustion now overcame the tension as the minutes ticked past. This was the case with Lieutenant Gerald Edwards in one of the wire-crushing tanks, D34 Diallance: ‘I sat in the tank with my feet on the engine to keep them warm and had a nap.’21 It was the same for Second Lieutenant Fred Dawson in E45 Elles II, named after the Tank Corps commander: ‘“Wake up, sir” – my sergeant gave me a vigorous shake, and as consciousness slowly returned, I realised that I had been sleeping on the metal floor of the tank, that we were ten yards behind our front line, and due to attack in about 15 minutes … With the help of a generous “tot” of rum, we crossed our front line to take up position with “tails up.” Everything was dead quiet.’22
One of the infantry units supporting them, the 8th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, also found solace in army rum, or more likely their own native whisky, as they prepared to leave the sandbagged safety of their trenches: ‘Just about six o’clock, we of company headquarters finished the last of our “iron ration” in a mutual toast to “Over the bags, and the best of luck.” That done, we earnestly scanned our watches.’23
Further back, Frank Heap and the officers of No. 12 Company gathered round their commander, Major R.O.C. Ward, to await zero hour, as described by Second Lieutenant Macintosh:
It is a truism that the best way to overcome nervousness is to make a joke of it … every one there, from long experience, knew that his companions were experiencing the same symptoms, and was much too sure of himself to suppose that they indicated fear. But set the least imaginative of men in their position, a few yards from an enemy with whom in five minutes he will be engaged in a desperate struggle for life, and whether he be brave man or coward … he must feel some warning of overstrung nerves. Consequently as the officers sat round the rim of a shell-hole, they busied themselves with humorous descriptions of their own feelings, interspersed with gleeful pictures of the state of unpreparedness of the enemy, and the awful surprise which awaited him.
So passed ten minutes. It was now Z-10, and rising with one accord, they went forward beyond the tanks and peered into No Man’s Land. Somewhere ahead in battle array, [No. 10 and 11] Company awaited the signal which for them would be the beginning of the attack. In the grey dawn, the further ridge was just visible, but no tanks or infantry could be distinguished. Slowly, in ticks which might have been heart-beats, the seconds passed; five minutes to go, four minutes, three minutes, two minutes – a long breath.
‘Now for it,’ cried the Major.
With the words, as at some dread command, the silence was rent with stupendous clamour, as up and down the line for miles thousands of guns belched flame.24<
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CHAPTER 25
‘Now For It!’
After so many failed hopes, so many months of preparation, the moment of truth had finally arrived. Whatever happened next would determine whether tanks were truly viable as a weapon of war, and whether their crewmen would live or die.
Waiting by his tank as the barrage began, Second Lieutenant Wilfred Bion heard ‘a moaning in the air’1 as the first torrent of shells passed overhead, and then ‘all the enemy trenches were outlined in low-bursting shrapnel. It looked like clouds of white with golden rain in the bursts. It was very beautiful – and very deadly.’2
The 4th Bn Seaforth Highlanders were in reserve at Metz-en-Couture, and from nearly three miles (or nearly four kilometres) behind the line, Lance-Corporal Willie Pennie was stunned by the scale of the bombardment:
The roar of … guns of all calibres seemed to rend the very skies. It was simply one continuous roar, punctuated every now and then by a still louder crash which seemed to deafen the sense of hearing. It was dark for over an hour after the commencement of the bombardment, so that from horizon to horizon the sky was illuminated by the lurid glare of the gun flashes, and bursting enemy shells, intermingled with red signal lights and greenish white star shells, combined to create a spectacle which has never before been presented to mortal vision, a spectacle at which one gazed amazed, fascinated, spellbound.3
The sight was even more awe-inspiring for the tank commanders in the first wave like Second Lieutenant Horace Birks, watching from a few hundred yards away as the unregistered guns blasted the enemy trenches with astonishing accuracy, before they moved forward to the attack:
With a terrific crash the guns all opened at once; there was an infinitesimal pause filled by the whine of passing shells, and then came the most beautiful sight I have ever seen; the whole of the enemy’s lines were lit up in a tossing bubbling torrent of multi-coloured flame, and – most beautiful of all – nothing came back in reply. We lurched off in the growing light, I for one expecting the most frightful crash to come any minute. It seemed too good to be true, this steady rumbling forward over marvellous going, no holes, no shelling, and infantry following steadily behind.4
Slightly further back, Second Lieutenant Macintosh and his fellow officers in No. 12 Company could no longer contain themselves:
With a cataclysmic crash the Boche line erupted in spouting volcanoes of smoke and earth, illumined in the flickering light of the incessant bursts. A second or two, and right, left and centre, up went flares of all colours – red, green, yellow, singly and in clusters – as the terrified front-line troops called upon their artillery to save them from annihilation. Meanwhile the officers, released at last from the intolerable strain of silence, cried out in delighted profanity at the hellish din of the barrage. No one could hear his neighbour’s voice – the field guns were seeing to that – all were perfectly happy to shout their comments to the air.
As the excitement gradually died down, they strained their eyes to see how their friends had been faring. Dawn was breaking, but the dust of the barrage and a thin ground-mist hid all sight of the enemy lines. Returning to their buses, the crews awaited, amid the crashing thunder, the signal to take their part in the fray.5
The wire-crushers and first-wave tanks moved off as soon as the barrage fell, the full-throated roar of their engines now mingling with the thunder of the guns.6 Major William Watson of No. 11 Company saw his men going into action:
In front of the wire tanks in a ragged line were surging forward inexorably over the short down grass. Above and around them hung the blue-grey smoke of their exhausts. Each tank was followed by a bunch of Highlanders, some running forward from cover to cover, but most of them tramping steadily behind their tanks. They disappeared into the valley. To the right the tanks were moving over the crest of the shoulder of the hill. To the left there were no tanks in sight. They were already in among the enemy.
Beyond the enemy trenches the slopes [of Flesquières ridge], from which the German gunners might have observed the advancing tanks, were already enveloped in thick white smoke. The smoke-shells burst with a sheet of vivid red flame, pouring out blinding, suffocating clouds. It was as if flaring bonfires were burning behind a bank of white fog. Over all, innumerable aeroplanes were flying steadily to and fro.
The enemy made little reply. A solitary field gun was endeavouring pathetically to put down a barrage. A shell would burst every few minutes on the same bay of the same trench. There were no other enemy shells that we could see. A machine-gun or two were still trained on our trenches, and an occasional vicious burst would bring the venturesome spectator scrambling down into the trench.7
This machine-gun fire was described by 51st Division headquarters as ‘heavy, but wild and harmless’, 8 though that was not always the case. Apart from that there was virtually no response from the enemy.
In the hilltop village of Flesquières, Hauptmann Otto Fürsen, the commander of 3rd Battalion, 84th Regiment, had just got back to his headquarters after visiting the forward positions to check all was well. Later he recalled: ‘Then I drank some coffee and began to write home. That letter, with the time of 7 a.m. [i.e. 6 a.m. UK time], is lying before me. On the third page you can clearly see from the sudden shaky handwriting when the stupendous bombardment began, with shells of all calibres … The explosions could not be counted, but I would estimate around five or six a second.’9 Or as the German official history put it: ‘The ground shuddered and quaked under the weight of the onslaught.’10 The prophecy had come true, and they were shaking mightily the earth.
A little later, Major Watson observed the second wave of tanks heading into action. ‘On our left another column of tanks had already disappeared into the valley on their way to Flesquieres. It was Ward’s company …’11 Frank Heap and the crew of Deborah were on their way to war.
* * *
As the first wave of tanks and infantry made their way across No Man’s Land, the most common impression was one of orderliness, as if this was an exercise or parade-ground manoeuvre, rather than an attack against one of the strongest enemy positions on the entire Western Front. Despite that, no-one knew for sure what would happen when they got to the other side.
The first great unknown was the barbed wire, which was an intimidating prospect for tank commanders like Second Lieutenant Horace Birks as they approached the enemy trenches:
Emerging out of the gloom a dark mass came steadily towards us, the German wire. It appeared absolutely impenetrable. It was certainly the thickest and deepest I have ever seen, it stretched in front of us in three belts, each about 50 yards deep, and it came up to the bottom of our sponsons. It neither stopped the tank nor broke up and wound round and round with the tracks as we at first feared, but squashed flat and remained flat, leaving a broad carpet of wire as wide as the tank, over which the following infantry were able to pick their way without great difficulty. We were working with the [6th] Black Watch and they were well up and following quickly behind us. It was a relief to get through the wire and come out on to the main German position. All this time there had been no firing and very little shell fire, and the tanks on the right and left could be seen keeping station with us.12
For obvious reasons the infantry had been just as anxious about this aspect of the plan, but an officer of 8th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders paid tribute to the work of the tanks: ‘It must be acknowledged that the paths so crushed were passed over with the greatest ease. In most places the wire was absolutely down, and flat; even at the worst, one could pass over in comfort with a little judicious exercise of the “heather step.”’13
Ironically, the Germans’ thoroughness had proved their undoing, since the solidly constructed wall of wire was easily crushed by a tank weighing almost thirty tons with its fascine. Colonel Baker-Carr explained: ‘The worst sort of wire is … the loose concertina stuff. We go over it and it springs up behind. The best sort of wire from our point of view is well put up wire, good strong stakes
, wire fairly taut, and the tank will flatten it out.’14
Once safely through the wire, the next question was whether the tanks would be able to cross the enormously wide front-line trenches, and everything now depended on what had been dubbed ‘the wily fascine’.15 Despite all the preparations, this did not go quite so smoothly for Second Lieutenant Birks: ‘A red flag stuck in the parapet of the trench ahead of us showed where the leading tank had dropped its fascine, we ran up to it and approached slowly to make quite certain of dropping on it, and crossed over. It was an enormous trench, and there was one horrid moment when the tail dropped onto the fascine when it seemed to be touch and go if we could get over. Actually we did so without difficulty and moved forward to the next line.’16 But he was luckier than others, including a couple of tanks which were victims of their own enthusiasm, according to Major Watson: ‘Two of these unfortunates in their eagerness to kill had collided and slipped together inextricably into a trench.’17
After this another D Battalion tank became ditched, the hulks providing a useful landmark for Captain Robert Tennant Bruce of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who was in charge of 51st Division’s stretcher-bearers, as he headed towards the ‘immensely wide and deep’ front-line trench. ‘Stuck on the parapet of it, inextricably jammed though not much knocked about, were three abandoned tanks … One glance at the trench made us realise the wisdom and forethought of the bundles on the tanks. Even with their help I marvelled that they could cross at all.’18
