The whole scheme was most carefully planned to ensure a proper balance, and the right amount of time was allotted to the different courses.
At first the work consisted chiefly in the training of more instructors, for the expansion of the Corps was to be rapid. The “settings” of all the courses showed great advances on the Thetford model, for at last the practice grounds could be made to resemble the actuality. There were old trenches and shell and mine craters, and the men were at once taken over bad ground, until the conditions of this curious progress became things of custom.
[16]“There is not one of us who will ever forget his first ride—the crawling in at the sides, the discovery that the height did not permit a man of medium stature to stand erect, the sudden starting of the engine, the roar of it all when the throttle opened, the jolt forward, and the sliding through the mud that followed, until at last we came to the ‘jump’ which had been prepared. Then came the downward motion, which suddenly threw us off our feet and caused us to stretch trusting hands toward the nearest object—usually, at first, a hot pipe through which the water from the cylinder jackets flowed to the radiator. So, down and down and down, the throttle almost closed, the engine just ‘ticking over,’ until at last the bottom was reached, and as the power was turned full on, the Tank raised herself to the incline, like a ship rising on a wave, and we were all jolted the other way, only to clutch again frantically for things which were hot and burned, until at last, with a swing over the top, we gained level ground. And in that moment we discovered that the trenches and the mud and the rain and the shells and the daily curse of bully beef had not killed everything within, for there came to us a thrill of happiness in that we were to sail over stranger seas than man had ever crossed, and set out on a great adventure.”
The necessity of regularising and systematising the Reconnaissance Branch had not been forgotten, and a separate Reconnaissance Service—really a specially adapted branch of “Intelligence”—was set up, under Major Hotblack.
The first organised work of the Branch was to be done in the preparations for the Battle of Arras, and it is at that period that we shall see the tentative beginnings of the very special system which was later on developed.
For the present “Reconnaissance” spent its time lecturing and being lectured, and in preparing maps or training areas for theoretical or practical exercises in the new art of Tank warfare.
II
By February 1917, when individual courses came to an end and unit training began, the H.B.M.G.C. was about 9000 strong.
Warmed by the sun of official approval, and watered with a kindly dew of Memoranda and official “definitions,” Companies had budded into Battalions and later Battalions were to burgeon into Brigades.
Even by this early date the authorities had decided that ultimately three Brigades of three Battalions each should be formed.