To this list of discomforts must be added that most of the men had never heard guns before, and that the lying-up places were close to our batteries.
II
The morning of the 15th was fine with a thin ground mist, and at six o’clock the thunder of the British artillery rose to a final hurricane. The barrage crept forward, and our Tanks and infantry crossed the parapets.
The Germans seemed to have heard no breath of the nature of the new arm which was to be used against them, and the light haze added greatly to the looming mystery of the approaching Tanks.
Official documents that were later on captured from the enemy revealed something of the deep psychological effect that our Tanks had had on the German infantry. These significant admissions might have done more to convince our own High Command of the great potentialities of the new weapon than they actually did.
One of the best known individual Tank exploits was that of the machine belonging to “C” Company, which helped a New Zealand and an English division in their assault upon Flers.
This was the furthest penetration achieved by any Tank that day.
This machine led its infantry, and these had their first taste of entering a village which they knew bristled with enemy machine-guns without suffering a single casualty.
The adventure had all the exhilaration of surprise, and the men, who had nerved themselves for the usual ordeal of house-to-house fighting, laughed at the astonishing anticlimax presented by their own and the Tanks’ stately progress down an almost empty street.
“All dressed up and no one to fight.”