IV
From August 22 till October 9, by which time hope of British success at Ypres had been more or less abandoned, the Tanks fought in about a dozen minor actions. They made almost as many more unavailing attempts to fight. Like the rest of the Army, they spent much vain labour and knew the weariness of much frustrated effort. They made elaborate and toilsome movements in preparation for attacks which were never launched. They struggled night after night to get up to some battle which eventually had to take place without them. Tanks had now invariably to move upon the roads, as the ground between had finally and definitely been reduced to impassable swamp. The roads naturally formed standing targets for the German gunners. We lost heavily in men and machines. General Elles had originally estimated that one machine in two would get into effective action. Now, in view of the appalling ground conditions, he revised this, only reckoning on one machine in ten getting into effective contact with the enemy. This modest estimate was as a matter of fact seldom exceeded.
Whenever Tanks did get into action, however, they usually did well, though rarely decisively, in spite of the standard of extraordinary courage which was steadfastly maintained by the crews.
The briefest review of most of these depressing little engagements is all that need be given. They were remarkable for nothing except the heroic patience shown day after day by every arm of our attacking forces.
On August 22 a minor attack was launched by all three Corps. Small parties of Tanks fought with each.
With the 2nd Corps in Glencorse Wood four Tanks of the 2nd Brigade were of some service, and did considerable execution.
With the 19th Corps eighteen Tanks of the 3rd Brigade were used on the off-chance of their being able to reach the objectives. The going was more than ordinarily atrocious, the whole of the Frezenberg-Zonnebeke road having been shot away. One Tank fought a very remarkable action, engaging the enemy near “Gallipoli” for sixty-eight hours.
With the 18th Corps twelve Tanks of the 1st Brigade headed an attack on Bülow Farm, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and other strong points. They proved useful, and several Tanks were in action for longish periods.
Two things are remarkable about this operation: first, that every Tank which ventured to leave the road instantly bellied. One was “drowned” in six or seven feet of water.
Secondly, the remarkable way in which they affected enemy moral. In several instances parties of the enemy surrendered at the sight of them. Prisoners in their examination said that they could have held up infantry, but “felt helpless against Tanks.”
Next day, on August 23, four 2nd Brigade Tanks went into action near Inverness Copse. The operation had had to be undertaken in a hurry, liaison was bad, and the attack a failure.
On August 26 four Tanks fought with the 33rd Division in the neighbourhood of Jerk House (near Glencorse Wood). The morning was misty, and an enemy shell unfortunately exploded a dump of smoke bombs just behind our lines. The attack was a failure. That night an inch of rain fell, and four Tanks which were to have operated with the 14th Division next day, August 27th, never reached their starting-point. Thirteen men were wounded and an officer killed on the way up.
Nearly three weeks elapsed before Tanks were again in action, and several battalions from the 2nd and 3rd Brigades were moved back to a new training area near Arras. A certain number of “Replacement Tanks” were issued to remaining battalions. The 1st Brigade stood ready in case they should be wanted at short notice, but no attacks of any sort were launched, probably partly on account of weather, and partly because a section of the 5th Army front was in process of transfer to the 2nd Army.
By the middle of September the relief had been completed, and again we endeavoured to press on.
On September 20 a fairly successful assault was made along the whole line. 2nd Brigade Tanks took part near Inverness Copse, and 1st Brigade Tanks near Triangle and Wurst Farms. But the ground being known to be unusually appalling in both areas, they had been given minor parts. These parts they played with fair success, and they undoubtedly scared the enemy a good deal. On the 18th Corps front 3rd Battalion Tanks had rather better luck.
The efforts made by the crews to get to the battle at all were superhuman.
Trees had been felled across the road by the enemy, resting breast high on their branches and the tall stumps from which they were not completely severed. At Wurst Farm also this kind of obstacle had been opposed to the Tanks—the butts of the trees lying obliquely and at a slope, forming a barrier very difficult to surmount.
If one leading machine got into difficulties struggling in the dark through or over these obstacles, the whole string of Tanks behind would be hung up, the deep swamps on either hand making it impossible to leave the road.
The Tanks, however, arrived, and are reported to have “inflicted many casualties.”
On September 26 fifteen Tanks operated near Zonnebeke Village. The attack was not a success, though the Tanks did a great deal of good work.
On October 4 took place the last two actions of this battle in which Tanks succeeded in playing a part. The first was fought by twelve Tanks of the 1st Brigade, who had the honour of taking part in the capture of Poelcapelle. It was a most successful little attack, and after reducing three strong points which guarded the outskirts, the Tanks hunted through the main street and out beyond the village.
In the other action four Tanks of the 1st Battalion were to take part in an attack upon Juniper Cottage on the line of the Reutelbeek.
Not only was this, like the other, a successful little action, it was ennobled by affording the background to one of the most patiently courageous actions of the War.
It was on October 4 that Captain Robertson fell upon completing a service for which he was posthumously awarded the V.C.
Tanks and infantry were to endeavour to cross the Reutelbeek and drive the enemy from the positions which they held on the further bank.
There was only one bridge over the marshy stream. If, in the half-light of the early morning and in the confusion of battle, they missed this crossing-place, their one chance of success was gone.
Captain Robertson, the officer commanding the section of Tanks, early realised that here lay the crux of the little operation for whose success he was responsible. For three days and nights he and his servant, Private Allen (subsequently awarded the D.C.M.), went carefully backwards and forwards over the ground under heavy fire, taping the routes for the Tanks.
Working without a break, this task took him until half-past nine on the night before the action.
It was time to get the machines up.
He started out at once again with his Tanks. The weather was dark and misty, and from inside a Tank it was impossible to see the way over the heavily shelled ground. Captain Robertson therefore walked ahead; they reached the assembly point in good time, and at 6 a.m. on October 4 he led them into action.
In imagining the rest of the story we are to remember that Captain Robertson had already been continuously under fire and without sleep for three days and nights.
The roads and every other landmark had all been wiped out by the shelling, but the bridge still stood. Captain Robertson still led his Tanks on foot, facing besides the shells an intense close-range machine-gun and rifle fire. He must have known that to go forward on foot means certain death.
He and his convoy were by now well ahead of the infantry. Still he led his Tanks on, carefully and patiently guiding them at a foot’s pace towards their objective.
They reached the bridge, and one by one the Tanks crossed over. He led them on towards a road that would take them straight up to the enemy positions, the machine-gun fire growing more and more intense as they advanced.
They reached the road, and as they reached it, Captain Robertson at last fell, shot through the head.
But the Tanks went on, and succeeded in their mission. The object for which Captain Robertson had so deliberately sacrificed his life was achieved.
The 2nd and 3rd Brigades had by now gone back to Arras to refit their machines, and to replenish their ranks. The 1st Brigade, however, made two more efforts to take part in the fighting. The battle was by now recognised as a serious British check. The Germans’ “elastic tactics” and the weather had together delayed us for so long that they had defeated us.
We had inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, and had in the act suffered still more severely ourselves.
Our hopes of clearing the coast were gone.
At the end of ten weeks we had achieved gains which had been on the programme for the first fortnight.
The whole plan of campaign had to be reconsidered, and to take Passchendaele must now be our ultimate ambition.
On October 7 two Tanks were to operate ahead of their infantry and endeavour to capture two fortified farms. Halfway to their objective a derelict Tank blocked the way, and the two advancing machines became ditched on trying to make a détour. By the time they had been unditched it was too late to go on.
On the 9th eight Tanks were to have attacked strong points on the Poelcapelle Road. At midnight on the night of the 8th-9th they started for their objectives.
The road was everywhere encumbered with blown-up limbers and the bodies of dead teams.
Large shell-holes had been blown in it.
The Tanks managed to get on as far as the Poelcapelle cross-roads, but the enemy then began to shell the road heavily. The leading Tank ditched in a new shell-hole, the second Tank as it waited to pass was set on fire by a direct hit.
These two wrecks formed a complete barrier to the advance of the rest of the column.
No way being found by which the surviving Tanks could circumvent the obstacle, and the shelling having grown hotter, it was decided to return.
But they had not gone far on the return journey when they discovered that on the way up the last machine of the column had somehow fouled an old derelict Tank. The remaining machines were trapped, and could neither go forward nor back.
The efforts of their crews proved vain, and they were all five lost, some being hit by enemy shells and the crews killed or wounded, and some ditched in vain efforts to make their escape across country.
The enemy continued to shell the road, which was one we were obliged to use, and it was a work of extreme hazard and difficulty to clear it of the wrecks by which it was completely blocked.
The work was, however, performed. Every night for a week Major G. L. Wilkes,[42] the 1st Brigade Engineer, used to go up the road as far as he could in a Tank. Then he would get out and work till morning. Most of the wrecks he blew up, some he and his small party of men were able to tip over into the swamp.
The scene on the first of these expeditions is thus described by an engineer officer who accompanied him:
“I left St. Julien in the dark, having been informed that our guns were not going to fire. I waded up the road, which was swimming in a foot or two of slush; frequently I would stumble into a shell-hole hidden by the mud. The road was a complete shambles and strewn with débris, broken vehicles, dead and dying horses and men; I must have passed hundreds of them as well as bits of men and animals littered everywhere. As I neared Poelcapelle our guns started to fire; at once the Germans replied, pouring shells on and around the road; the flashes of the bursting shells were all round me. I cannot describe what it felt like; the nearest approach to a picture I can give is that it was like standing in the centre of the flame of a gigantic Primus stove. As I neared the derelict Tanks, the scene became truly appalling: wounded men lay drowned in the mud, others were stumbling and falling through exhaustion, others crawled and rested themselves up against the dead to raise themselves a little above the mud. On reaching the Tanks I found them surrounded by the dead and dying; men had crawled to them for what shelter they would afford. The nearest Tank was a Female. Her left sponson doors were open. Out of these protruded four pairs of legs; exhausted and wounded men had sought refuge in this machine and dead and dying lay in a jumbled heap inside.”
So ended the tragedy of October 9, the last of a series of hopeless adventures.
A few Tanks were later moved up to a new railhead, with the hope that better weather might enable them to take part in the final attack on Passchendaele, the attack which was to end the Flanders offensive. But the weather did not mend, and it was without the help of Tanks that by a final effort the heights of Passchendaele were stormed and taken in the first week of November. We held our gains. The high ground was ours, the weary armies might rest, and the tragic nightmare of the Third Battle of Ypres was over at last.
When time brought the verdict of the Official Despatch upon the work of the Tanks, it was neither an unjust nor an unkindly one:—
[43]“Although throughout the major part of the Ypres battle, and especially in its later stages, the condition of the ground made the use of Tanks difficult or impossible, yet whenever circumstances were in any way favourable, and even when they were not, very gallant and valuable work has been accomplished by Tank Commanders and crews on a great number of occasions. Long before the conclusion of the Flanders offensive these new instruments had proved their worth, and amply justified the labour, material and personnel diverted to their construction and development.”
It was not to be long before the Corps had an opportunity of proving their worth indeed.