I
The secrets of the Tank Corps have been so well kept that there are few civilians who even now know anything of Tanks or their crews beyond what might be learned from photographs, or a distant view of “Egbert” or some other War Bond or Olympian Tank.
The Censorship has seen to it that the civilian has had no opportunity of making himself familiar with the tactical opportunities and problems that the use of Tanks has introduced or with the conditions under which Tank crews fight.
It is for the civilian reader that the present chapter is intended. He is to be given some idea of the oak tree before he is invited to dissect the acorn.
If he has no idea of the appearance and habits of the Tanks that fought at the Canal du Nord or that pushed back the enemy at Mormal, he cannot be expected to thrill as he should over the vicissitudes of the first converted Holt Tractor. For to one who had never seen the engine of a through express the history of “Puffing Billy” would almost certainly prove insufferably tedious.
The authors, therefore, propose to deal, very briefly, with the modern Tank before plunging the reader into the dark ages of 1914, where, to pursue our analogy, Watt’s kettle-lid and the “Rocket” dwell obscurely.