The two Whippets remained out on patrol for about an hour, but no further attack was attempted, and they returned to the village about 3 p.m. Later in the afternoon the gap in our lines was filled by the arrival of a New Zealand Division. This successful little action is interesting as the first ever fought by the Whippets.
There were several other sections of Whippets and heavy Tanks out on patrol on this and the following days.
Several Tanks of the 10th Battalion fought in Rossignol Wood on two occasions, and Whippets of the 2nd Battalion were in action near Bouzencourt in a blinding rainstorm.
Everywhere it was the same story of villages the question of whose ownership was “obscure” of gaps in the line which the Tanks had to bridge for a critical hour or two, often firing their machine-guns into the advancing waves of the enemy until the guns grew hot and jammed and the Tanks had to retreat. Often they would go back till their petrol gave out, and the crews had to blow up their machines.
The new Medium A machines (the Whippets) acquitted themselves extremely well, and there were astonishingly few cases of mechanical trouble.
The Battalion histories describe many pitiful scenes which took place during the retreat, the fate of the inhabitants, for whom our withdrawal meant complete ruin, striking the eye-witnesses as the most distressing feature of the whole business.
[59]“During the withdrawal the condition of the villagers was pitiful. Women and children and old men crazed with fright with liveliest memories of the conduct of the Germans in the area occupied by them, were to be seen streaming westwards from their homes, pushing their meagre possessions before them in hand-carts and alternately invoking the aid of their Saints and calling down their wrath upon the hated Boche.”
Nor was the retreat only tragic to those of the Tank Corps who had to witness the supreme misery of these processions of the Cross. There was a lesser unhappiness for the tacticians of the Tank Corps in the contemplation of the appalling waste of Tank machines and men.
The Tanks had been far too scattered ever to pull their weight.
[60]“To hit with them as they were distributed on March 21 was like hitting out with an open hand instead of with a clenched fist.