This was really a vast engineering works covering about twenty acres of ground, where, besides a very large number of trained and expert mechanics, more than a thousand Chinese coolies worked.
These coolies often became very dexterous artisans.
Here, in endless ranks down the long shops, they would toil indefatigably, in the summer stripped to the waist, their brown bodies gleaming in the white light of the arc lamps or in the glow of the forges, or in the winter dressed in their loose blue quilted jackets and close caps with curious rabbits’ fur ear-lappets.
Possibly the shattered or burnt-out Tank would have to be almost entirely rebuilt, two wrecked Tanks providing, perhaps, parts enough to make one good one. Here, finally, the reconstructed Tank would be tested and sent back to the Central Stores.
Possibly it would have been reduced to a sort of “C. III.” category, and made into a Supply Tank. Possibly it would have been fitted with all the latest gadgets, and come out from its reforging a better weapon than it was originally.
For the activities of the Central Workshops were not confined to mere repair. It will be remembered how they distinguished themselves in the matter of the lightning delivery of fascines, releasing gear, and supply sledges for the Battle of Cambrai.
A large proportion, too, of the experiments which led to improvements in the design of Tanks were carried out here; for example, the long Tank and the unditching beam were of Central Workshops origin, and here the officers who fought the Tanks could have their ideas for gadgets sympathetically reviewed and put to practical proof by the band of expert engineers that Lieut.-Colonel Brocklebank had brought together. But they were more than mere experts; they were enthusiasts whose unflagging zeal had created the marvel of Central Workshops where there had been bare ploughland so short a time before.
IV
We have traced a Tank from its setting forth from home with unscratched paint through the vicissitudes of battle to its remoulding as a greatly improved machine or to its relegation to “Permanent Base.”
How would the military history run of a member of a Tank crew which had fought, say, at the Battle of Cambrai?