Chapter 25
Something Hellish was a Tank
In the
interval between my being wounded and returning to my unit of the 24th Division, the
gunners had secured salient points, especially around Panama Canal and Zonnebeke. I was
able to walk openly over the place at which I was wounded. Now calm prevailed, so
different from the morning of 9th July. As I stood reverently and looked around I saw
scores of crude crosses formed by rifles stuck in the ground marking graves and all over
the place there were red poppies blooming in profusion.
I
thanked God that I had been spared and I knew that I would go to Africa one day.
When I
got back from my sentimental tour I saw that all the men were working feverishly loading
up wagons. So this was it, the whisper I heard earlier from two military policemen was
true, the 24th Division was moving south to St Quentin.
While
in hospital I had read all about the advance, deep into the St Quentin section and the
capture of many Germans and their material. The journey was too far by road so we
entrained at a siding near Proven and moved to the town of Bapaume. Waiting for us were
service personnel, twenty-four horses, one new gun and badly needed spare parts.
Resting
there for three days we all got to know each other and had fine meals all properly
seasoned and hot. All our kit was inspected and what was missing was made good. We had two
days' forced marching, until we camped at Baulincourt.
We
relieved the 37th Division and at night we moved our guns towards positions called Cobra
Copse, some three hundred yards to the rear of Le Verguier. The place looked ideal with
good gun pits, dugouts, trenches and camouflage.
I
heard one officer remark, 'A comfortable place, too damned comfortable, too quiet!'
Two
sentries were near the Cobra Copse and one told me, 'This place is a picnic. I hope you
keep your guns quiet.'
He had
just finished when the action whistle sounded. Horses arrived, we limbered up two guns and
galloped them to a mound only nine hundred yards from the front line.
I was
appointed Corporal Battery Observer and was supplied with a periscope, field glasses and
maps with nearly every inch of German lines marked on them. All that night, we pounded a
dozen places with shrapnel, high explosives and at intervals, gas shells.
On my
map I marked hits on dumps (one blew up), new earthworks, snipers' nests, machine-gun
posts, a light railway track and a convoy. The enemy kept silent, but their planes and
observation balloons (which we called sausages) kept watch, as did our many planes and
'sausages'.
There
were dogfights above the clouds and many planes were downed. One shot-down German plane
fell near our rear guns. The pilot was dead and his map had many of our gun sites
carefully marked.
We
heard on the 'grapevine' that General Byng was in the vicinity with staff officers and
that their binoculars were frequently pointed towards Cambrai. Next forenoon I was in a
support trench with two officers. Looking back I saw a frightening machine approaching and
shouted the warning to them, 'Something hellish is moving our way.
It was
a tank, the first I had seen. Its nose rose high into the air and then plunged down to
disappear down a trench, then up again. Momentarily I felt quite seasick.
Behind
the tank an anchor was dragging away enemy wire entanglements. Our guns were ordered to
open up with smoke shells, in advance of the tanks. Through the gaps ripped open by the
tanks followed our infantrymen, at the double and with fixed bayonets.
Within
minutes we were hampered at our work as hundreds of prisoners surrendered their weapons to
our soldiers and then quickly trooped to our positions. My officers took the initiative
and detailed some infantrymen to escort the Germans to our rear and out of the war zone.
This
'Byng plan' threw the enemy from a stand-by to a disarray force. The tank was a new weapon
and a fearful weapon when its fore, aft and side guns were blazing. Our penetration was
deep.
With
my officers I walked over to the vacated German trenches. They were good dugouts and at
various points were stocks of small armaments, cylinders of gas and forsaken machine-gun
nests.
The
tanks' routes, the men at the guns in the tanks and the infantrymen with rifle and bayonet
were perfectly co-ordinated under the Byng attack plan, but it seemed as if other high
ranking officers were not convinced about the tanks' advantages for they failed to give
the orders to immediately pounce and consolidate in a similar way along our whole front.
The victory was short lived. The enemy regrouped and launched several counter-attacks,
causing us huge losses. Soon our guns came under attack, but the reserve infantry were too
late in arriving to stem the Hun reprisal. In short, we were back to square one.
