VI
At three o’clock on the morning of July 4, almost before the sky had begun to lighten, the Tank engines were swung up all along our line, and at two minutes past the hour sixty graceful Mark V.’s slid forward after their infantry, two low-flying aeroplanes escorting them. As the Tanks moved along, the crew’s blessed the sweet running of their new machines, for there had not been a single mechanical hitch of any sort, and they knew that the shrewd eyes of the Australians had been fixed like gimlets upon them.
But the whole day was to be one long triumph for the Mark V.
Here and there as the attack surged forward the Tanks were leading, following close behind the bursting shells. Here and there the Australians were ahead. The enemy’s infantry put up little or no fight, but their machine-gunners resisted us with the tenacious courage which we had learned to expect.
But our onrush was inexorable. The new Tanks were possessed, the Germans found, of a deadly power of manœuvre which they used to the full, expending little ammunition upon machine-gun nests, but, even when they had passed an emplacement by in the first rush, swinging swiftly round on the wretched gunners and crushing guns and crews beneath them. As a Tank chronicler somewhat grimly remarks: “This method eliminated all chance of the enemy coming to life again after the attack had passed by.”
Over 200 machine-guns were accounted for during the day. There were also other and rarer little groups of picked men which the Tanks here and there routed out of the standing crops.
These little parties, generally consisting of three men, were armed with a special rifle of gigantic size designed to be fired—like our Lewis gun—from a bipod. Its projectile was a heavy steel-cored armour-piercing bullet.
It was a new anti-Tank weapon, a weapon from which the Germans hoped great things.
With the 13th Battalion, a Tank which had advanced ahead of the infantry, came upon some enemy dug-outs, on the far side of a trench too broad for their machine to cross. From these dug-outs the enemy were keeping up a hot fire.
The Tank Commander, Second Lieutenant Edwards, and Private Benns, immediately got out of their Tank and attacked the garrison on foot. Between them the two killed seven of the enemy with their revolvers, and the rest they took prisoners, and handed over to the infantry at the first opportunity.
There were many fine pieces of individual work, especially instances of Tanks helping each other under heavy fire, and there is little doubt that it was to this friendly co-operation, this towing of lame Tanks out of hot corners, the astonishingly low casualties in machines were partly due.
The despatch tells how the battle fared all along the line.
“Moving up and down behind the barrage, the Tanks either killed the enemy or forced him to take shelter in dug-outs, where he became an easy prey to the infantry. Hamel was taken by envelopment from the flanks and rear, the enemy was driven from Vaire Wood, and at the end of the day our troops had gained all their objectives and over 1500 prisoners.”
Our little success had been complete and triumphant.
No less than fifty-seven of the sixty fighting Tanks came through the day without a scratch, the infantry killed and wounded amounted to less than half the German prisoners who passed through our cages; and as we have seen, the battle between Tanks and machine-guns being à l’outrance, the proportion of Germans killed to those made prisoners had been unusually high.
As for the Tank crews, they suffered only thirteen men wounded. To our great satisfaction also, the five damaged machines were all salved, and thus the armament of the Mark V.’s could not be investigated by the enemy.
But at first almost the most striking characteristic of the victory seemed the perfect co-operation between Tanks and infantry.
The Tanks and the Australians were equally enthusiastic over one another’s performances. The Australians were surprised and delighted at the weight and solidity which the sixty Tanks had lent their impact, and at the sense of support and comradeship which their men had experienced.
The Tank Corps were equally impressed by the superb moral of the Australians,[66] “who never considered that the presence of Tanks exonerated them from fighting, and who took instant advantage of any opportunity created by the Tanks.”
A generous and lasting friendship had been established. The 5th Tank Brigade and their Australians were destined throughout their coming partnership to prove an almost invincible combination.
But it was not alone the battle partners who were pleased and surprised.
The whole Allied front rang with the news of victory.
We had sent up our tentative ballon d’essai, and behold it had sailed up, high above our highest expectations and now hung, a token in the sky. All men might know that though Apollyon had straddled all across the way, we had beaten him and were at last come out of the Valley of Humiliation.