Each Battalion was to be equipped with seventy-two machines and to consist of four fighting sections, a Headquarters Section and a Battalion Workshop, besides that curious collection of miscellaneous individuals, tailors, barbers, shoemakers and clerks, which is necessary in every unit. General Elles was to command in France, and took over on September 29 with the rank of Colonel. His “charter” was as follows:
“The Headquarters in France is to command the Heavy Branch M.G.C. in the field, to be responsible for the advanced training and for the Tactical employment of the Corps under the command of the C.-in-C.”
He was also to have a large Central Depot and Repairing Shop in his charge.
In England there was to be a Headquarters directly under the War Office and which was to administer the Corps as a whole. The home Headquarters was to be responsible for the provision of men, for supplies of “technical material,” the preliminary training of units, and the maintenance of units in France as regards men, machines, material and spare parts.
The experienced reader will perceive in this system of dual control a very promising sowing of dragon’s teeth.
No one who has had an inside knowledge of the growth of any unit or of any institution whatsoever during the War will be surprised at the fact that the Tank Corps did not escape the common lot. It suffered from growing pains.
Is there a new Ministry, a new Hospital, a new Factory, a new Battalion, nay, a single new Committee, the tiniest Association of Allotment Holders, the smallest Village Ladies’ Work Depot, that did not?
Among such organisations there are but two categories—those who have the candour to acknowledge that they went through such a period, and those who still dare not trust themselves to allude to it. Perhaps if we consider the examples that come within our own experience, we shall find that the stronger and more vital the new unit, the more capable and full of character the men who moved it, the more marked was that initial stage of uncomfortable adolescence.
The settling down, before responsibilities and prerogatives had been properly paired and allotted to the right individuals. The time when one department was still irritable from overwork and another exasperated by not being given enough responsibility. We have all of us known such a time, and most of us now look back upon its very real miseries with a kind of mingled wonder and amusement. Not otherwise do the pioneers of the Tanks look back upon their awkward age.
As soon as the programme of expansion had been decided upon[17] the question of how Tank production could be increased became an exceedingly important one. Owing to the inevitable loss in battle, and still more to the unfortunate defects of the type of the track roller then supplied, there were not enough Tanks even for the training scheme proposed for France, where there were in December 1916 only sixteen machines in working order. The needs of the big training centre which was setting up at Wool could not at present be met at all, and the accumulation of any adequate reserve of fighting Tanks was, for the moment, impossible.