III
The failure of their armour-piercing bullets against the Mark IV. must have proved something of a disappointment to the enemy.
It is curious to trace the effort which the Germans made to keep up with our development of the Tank.
For once, we had moved first, and the enemy was always to be a lap behind.
No sooner had he discovered how effective was his “K” bullet against the Mark I. Tank, than we confronted him with the Mark IV., against which it was powerless.
The Germans always had rather hazy ideas as to the capabilities and habits of our current Tank. They had had ample opportunity of examining two Tanks which lay derelict in their lines on the Somme, yet until the Battle of Arras they believed that Tanks were largely dependent on the use of roads, and that therefore pits and other obstacles in roads must form a useful anti-Tank defence.
[26]“It was also not till the later stages of the Battle of Arras that the enemy realised from some captured Tanks near Bullecourt that the ‘K’ bullet was effective against the type of Tank that had been in use against them since September 1916.
“By the time the enemy had fully realised this, however, the old Tanks were used up, and at Messines the Mark IV. had made its appearance and the chance of the armour-piercing bullet was over....
“After Messines the Germans began to realise the importance of artillery as a defence against Tanks, and ‘the chief rôle allotted to the infantry was to keep its head’ and leave the rest to the guns....
“Prominence was given to indirect fire[27] of guns of both heavy and light calibres on approaching Tanks. In spite of several dawn attacks the enemy laid great stress on what he called ‘Distant Defence,’ and a few special anti-Tank guns, about two per divisional front, were placed in specially covered positions.”
It was not till the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917 that he was to discover by chance the one effective weapon against Tanks. That is to say, Direct Fire by field guns.
The “Hush” Operation
I
Before it was decided to fight the enemy at Messines there had been an idea of an attack near Lens, and most of the reconnaissance for such a battle had been carried out.
Like many another battle of the War, it was never fought, and remained only the shadow of an operation.
Of all these shadows and projected attacks, the one which had attracted more interest than any other was in active preparation while the 2nd Brigade was fighting at Messines.
This was the revised and abridged version of the famous “Hush” operation, that is, of the projected attack on the Belgian coast.
The first time such a notion had been suggested was in the spring of 1916, and elaborate plans were then made for a surprise landing in and near Ostend.
But we were obliged to co-operate with the French, and to fight instead on the Somme. The First Battle of the Somme, however, developed into a “slogging match” and lasted through the rest of that campaigning season.
Next year the idea was again brought up. This time Tanks were to take part. The scheme was a less ambitious one, and the landing was to be effected between Ostend and the Allied line about Nieuport. A special detachment of Tanks was located at Erin, and started training for the difficult manœuvre of climbing the sea wall which here protects the coast. This training was carried out as secretly as possible, and it was given out that its object was the surmounting of some of the Lille fortifications, a figment which for long satisfied the minds of the curious.
The problem to be solved was an exceedingly complex one.
The mere landing of Tanks on an open beach is no light matter. When that beach is heavily defended by an alert and resourceful enemy, when it is commanded and enfiladed by a concentration of artillery of all calibres concealed amongst the dunes, and when in addition the shelving beach is crowned by a steep sea wall of concrete, a landing would seem to have but small chance of success. Still, there was a chance, and the stake at hazard being a big one, big risks might be cheerfully accepted.
The general plans for the enterprise having been approved in the highest quarters, were then very carefully worked out down to the smallest details by a little band of experts, prominent amongst whom were Admiral Bacon, Lieut.-Colonel Philip Johnson, and Major Hotblack.
The whole of the projected landing was elaborately staged, and long and patiently rehearsed—the Tanks playing the lead in what the whole various cast hoped was to be a really notable success.
Immense pontoons 600 ft. in length were specially built to carry the landing parties—armies in little with representatives almost of every arm and branch except the cavalry.
These strange craft were to be lashed between a couple of monitors, and so pushed across the channel and up the beach at certain selected points, points that exhaustive air reconnaissance and photography at all states of the tide had indicated as most suitable.
Actual trials of the pontoons and their monitor escorts were made in the secret waters of the Thames, and officers of the Tank Corps would suddenly disappear on unknown missions, to reappear as suddenly with no memory as to where they had been or what they had seen in the interval.
The sea wall itself might well have been designed as a special defence against sea-borne hostile Tanks, its smooth concave face and projecting coping making it absolutely unscalable by an honest Tank.
The wall was of recent construction, and by a fortunate chance the Belgian architect who had designed it had escaped to France with all his drawings.
From his plans an exact reproduction of a length of the wall was made.
There in the experimental ground it stood, perfectly smooth, and worst of all, ending at the top in a curl-over coping.
At least, however, the engineers now knew the extent of their problem.
In the first place, the Tanks had to get up somehow, and in the second place, when they were up they had to help haul up guns and transport lorries.
After “trying on” various devices, the Tanks at last adopted what was practically a portable ramp for the occasion.
The Tank, until it reached the sea wall, carried it well in the air on a long spar supported by wire hawsers.
Then the ramp was lowered on to the pair of little wheels with which it was fitted. On these the Tank pushed it up the incline, wheelbarrow fashion, until further progress was stopped by the coping.
The two wheels were then immediately shed, and steel spikes on the under side of the work were driven into the concrete by the weight of the Tank, which now, disengaging itself, proceeded to climb up its own scaling ladder which it had thus placed in position. But the lorries and guns had still to be provided for.
The angle formed by the inclined plane and the level ground above the retaining wall was a sharp one.
Besides, it must be understood that the inclined plane used by the Tanks fitted in under the concrete lip. At the point of junction between the ground and the inclined plane there was, therefore, a considerable bump. Both the acuteness of the angle and this “bump” made it necessary to adopt some less back-breaking device for the four-wheeled vehicles. A strong gangway, like a see-saw, was therefore employed, and up this they were hauled, the weight of the gun or lorry gently tipping the board down when it passed the balancing point.
But the landing was never made, and for this many elaborate explanations have been put forward.
Two circumstances seem, however, sufficient to explain the apparent withdrawal of our hands from the plough.
The first was what seemed a trivial attack which the Germans made on July 10.
It will be remembered that the Belgian inundations stretched inland opposite Nieuport, almost from the mile-wide belt of dry ground next the sea which was formed by the sand dunes. Through these dunes cut the river Yser, and near the coast we held both banks of the river. When the time came, General Rawlinson could have moved his troops forward freely over the numerous bridges which had been made, to join hands with the landing party for whom he had so long been waiting.
In the dune and polder country trenches were impossible, and our defence here consisted of breastworks built in the sand.
Now it had been abundantly and constantly proved throughout 1915 and 1916 that any advanced trench system could be taken at any time by the side which was prepared to mass sufficient troops and guns for the purpose.
The Germans could have stretched out their hands at any moment for this bit of coast.
They chose not to grasp it until they imagined that our plans, whatever they might be, were complete, and when their attack would probably cause us the maximum of inconvenience. Therefore, it was on July 10 that, after a tremendous bombardment, they attacked the position in overwhelming force. Our defence was gallant but vain, and by the evening the Germans had captured the northern part of our bridgeheads.
It is true that we succeeded in holding Nieuport itself, but the loss of even the small strip of ground to the north of it rendered the assembly of troops in that area for our own attack, which was to co-operate with the coast landing, almost impossible.
The second and more weighty circumstance was the fatal slowness of our main advance at Ypres.
In the next chapters we shall consider these tragic months, whose slow passage swept away so many schemes and hopes, and made unfruitful so much thought and labour.
Enough that the “Hush” operation was swept silently away with the rest. As late as the beginning of October, however, the men who had planned so cunningly, whose minds had surmounted so many difficulties, still hoped that their work might not prove barren.
But by the middle of the month it had become clear that the landing could not take place, and the end of October the special Tank detachment was finally disbanded.