Very excellent courses were also arranged in the Reconnaissance Schools. But almost the most interesting of the Reconnaissance Side’s activities was the series of improvised courses—outdoor schemes, indoor practices and lectures which they arranged during the weary time while the Tank Corps “stood to quarters” through January, February and early March 1918.
The events of this time we propose to chronicle in the next chapter but one.
There had by this time been many other Tank activities which we have not at present chronicled at all. The French had trained and equipped a Tank Corps. The Americans were busy with Tanks, and a Detachment of our own Corps had fought in two engagements in Palestine.
Note to Chapter XI
Stories of the early days of Wool are related in the 6th Battalion History.
When the first few consignments of Tanks were sent to the Camp at Bovington from Wool Station the most elaborate precautions were taken to secure the machines from the eyes of the profane.
The route was guarded by military policemen marshalled by A.P.M.’s. All civilian traffic was stopped, and—as if the Tanks had been so many Lady Godivas—all the blinds in the front rooms of the farms and cottages which bordered the roads had to be drawn, and all the inhabitants were relegated to the back rooms.
This ritual was observed every time a batch of Tanks arrived.
One farmer remarked that he was delighted to help keep the secret in any manner that seemed good to the authorities, but he thought they might like to know that a day or two before a Tank had broken down and that he and his horses had helped to tow it into his yard, where it had remained for forty-eight hours.