It was calculated that to cut it with artillery would have taken five weeks and cost twenty millions of money.
Not only was the actual “ditch” of the trench believed to be in most places some 12 ft. wide and 18 ft. deep, but at either side, the parados and parapet (each about 2 ft. 6 in. high) were, we had reason to believe, so sloped as to increase the effective width to about 16 to 18 ft.
These were the dimensions of some trenches captured by us at Arras, and for such trenches we had to be prepared.
The space to be cleared was too wide for a Tank. A special means of crossing was, however, devised by the Staff of the Central Workshops at Erin.
This was a special huge fascine made of about seventy-five ordinary bundles of brushwood, strongly compressed and bound by heavy chains.
It was carried on the nose of the machine, and could be released by a touch from inside the Tank by a specially ingenious releasing gear, and dropped neatly into the trench.
The manufacture of the 350 fascines and the fitting of the Tanks with the releasing gear was a piece of work of which the Central Workshops have reason to be proud. They received the order for 350 fascines and 110 Tank sledges on October 24, when they had already for some months been working at high pressure, chiefly upon Tanks salved from the Salient.
To fulfil the new order the shops worked day and night for three weeks.
To make the fascines, 21,000 ordinary stout bundles of brushwood, such as are used for road repairing, were unloaded at the Central Workshops.
Here eighteen Tanks had been specially fitted up, for binding and fastening these into bundles of sixty or seventy.