IV
After the battle, such of the Tanks as could go under their own power rallied, and steps were at once taken to salve as many as possible of those which had become incapacitated.
From this point, till all available Tanks had been used up and till the ground became finally impossible in mid-November, Tanks were to be constantly employed in insignificant numbers in a series of small experimental actions.
This method of fighting by twos and threes against special strong points was afterwards discarded, as it proved unsatisfactory. Several of these small actions were nevertheless very successful, and showed in miniature some special purpose which Tanks could serve, or illustrated the importance of some special Tank organisation.
For example, Thiepval showed how Tanks could be used without artillery preparation, and Beaumont-Hamel showed the importance of a good Reconnaissance Branch. These small actions were therefore important, not in themselves, but because they were microcosms. In one or two unsuccessful actions it was rather the state of the ground which spoiled the battle than mistaken tactics.
For as the campaign drew on conditions became worse and worse. By the beginning of October the Army in general, and particularly the Tanks, had a foretaste of the miseries of Flanders. The general conditions of this part of the campaign are admirably described by Colonel Buchan in his History of the War:
“October was one long succession of tempestuous gales and drenching rains.
“To understand the difficulties which untoward weather imposed on the Allied advance, it is necessary to grasp the nature of the fifty square miles of tortured ground which three months’ fighting had given them, and over which lay the communications between their fighting line and the rear.... Not the biggest mining camp or the vastest engineering undertaking had ever produced one tithe of the activity which existed behind each section of the battle line. There were places like Crewe, places like the outskirts of Birmingham, places like Aldershot or Salisbury Plain....
“There were now two No Man’s Lands. One was between the front lines; the other lay between the old enemy front and the front we had won. The second was the bigger problem, for across it must be brought the supplies of a great army....
“The problem was hard enough in fine weather; but let the rain come and soak the churned-up soil, and the whole land became a morass. There was no pavé, as in Flanders, to make a firm causeway. Every road became a water-course, and in the hollows the mud was as deep as a man’s thighs....