A certain number of its men were, however, organised as Lewis gun detachments, and by mid-April saw a considerable amount of fighting.
One such detachment was attached to the 61st Division near Nieppe Forest, and with them manned a line of fortified shell-holes.
There were no trenches and the country was absolutely flat. The whereabouts of the enemy was extremely uncertain. The Tank Lewis gunners held about a mile and a half of improvised line, their headquarters being a little farmhouse not far from Merville. Hardly had the detachment taken over than the enemy put down a hot barrage. A Reconnaissance Officer who was present described the events that followed in a letter home:
“I went out of the northern door of the farm. A beastly sniper’s bullet whizzed past my head, and then another and another. The bullets were all coming from the north, and it seemed as though Fritz had made his way through the town and would get us from the rear. This is what he did do. A sergeant was killed next to me, and Norton[57] told me to go back to Divisional Headquarters and report the situation. After I had been there about an hour, a runner came back to say Norton had been wounded, and soon after we heard that the enemy had broken through to the north of the Canal. Just at that moment General Elles came up and asked what the situation was, and having heard that there were some Tanks and men of another Battalion on the northern side of the Canal, said he would go up and see for himself. He had his A.D.C. with him, and took me along as well. We motored right up to where we came in touch with our men, who were being pushed back on the north of the Canal. We then got out of the car and went forward on foot. The General had not even his tin hat on, but his red and gold. He went out beyond the withdrawing infantry and taking out his map, held a council of war, a council not uninterrupted by machine-gun bullets.
“He then sent me back a couple of hundred yards and told me to stop every man on a certain cross-road, reorganise them and make them take up fresh positions. This I did, and we thus re-established a line. The General took command and made his Headquarters in a small house until shelled out of it and into a neighbouring ditch. I was sent back to Divisional Headquarters to report and get some more ammunition. When I returned the situation was pretty well the same, and we were holding on all right. The General then suggested that we might see in which houses the enemy really were. During these investigations Ian Stewart went forward by himself on our flank, and had a private battle with a company of Germans, killing, amongst others, one who was on a bicycle, and himself returning on the captured machine, the original rider’s papers in his pocket.
“We were relieved about 7 p.m. by a new Division, and I got back to Divisional Headquarters about 9. The next morning the C.O. turned up with the rest of the Battalion.”
The 3rd Tank Battalion, whose camp at Bray had been destroyed, were now a fully fledged Whippet unit.
During the first few days the Whippets saw no actual fighting but were subject to plenty of alarms, and made a great number of fruitless excursions from place to place.
At the Bray Camp there had been, unfortunately, a certain number of Whippet machines which were temporarily laid up with engine trouble.
But there were no spare parts and no time for repairs, and a good many machines had to be blown up “unblooded.”