More than anything else, it was this sentiment which kept men ploughing through the mud of 1917, in the dark days when often the chance of reaching an objective had fallen to ten per cent.; which kept workshops in full swing all round the clock on ten and eleven hour shifts for weeks and, once, for months on end; which, finally, secured from the factories an intensive and remarkable output.
Sir Albert Stern brought to his labours a whole-hearted energy and enthusiasm unsurpassed. But more practical than this alone, he ensured initial production by a contempt for routine and material difficulties and a resilience to rebuff as fortunate as they were courageous.
To Sir Eustace d’Eyncourt, the only member of the original Committee still officially connected with us, a great debt is due. We have been fortunate to have had at our disposal an engineer of his wide practical experience, who devoted much of his scanty leisure to our guidance both in policy and in detail, whose sagacious counsels have more than once checked the impetuosity of some of his associates.
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Before passing to the aspects of Tank history with which I have been directly concerned, I wish to make reference to two organisations vital to the Tank Corps in the field. For if that represented the point of the spear, they combined to form a most solid and dependable shaft.
The first of these two was the Training Organisations set up in England to produce the men; second, the manufactories which produced the machines.
The task of the Training Centre and the cadet schools was particularly onerous. The organisation of any new instructional centre in the haste and pressure of the time was no easy task—its work was often thankless and subject to much ill-informed and light-hearted criticism.
The Training Centre of the Tank Corps had additional difficulties. There was no guidance as to training—the entire system had to be thought out from the beginning, and continually modified by the experience of the battlefield—instructors had not only to be found but trained—esprit de corps and discipline had to be built up; and all this against time.
It may perhaps be a compensation to the many officers and men who lived laborious days, and were not rewarded by seeing the results of their work in the field, to know that “France” has never been under any illusion as to the great thoroughness of their work.
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