The Reconnaissance Officers had taken little parties of Tank Commanders to the best observation posts in their sectors, and had there shown them the ground they must cross and expounded their maps to them. All the Tanks had been brought safely to their railheads and successfully detrained, and now they lay waiting in their tankodromes. “C” (afterwards No. 3) Battalion lay in Arras itself. The town had been most carefully prepared for troops to assemble and wait in.
Great chalk quarries underlay it, and these had been linked up and lit with electricity, and here two divisions could lie thirty feet underground secure from the heaviest shelling.
The Tanks had chosen the Citadel as their assembly place. There in the great grassy ditch of the old Vauban Fort they lay, nosing for cover into the re-entrant angles of the tall cliff of mellow brickwork that towered above them.
As soon as it was dark, on the night of April 8–9, the Tanks set off on their journey up the line.
There had been a question as to the route which these Tanks were to follow.
The alternatives were a long detour round the head of a shallow valley or a short cut over ground of questionable soundness.
The short cut had finally been decided upon, and, on the Reconnaissance Officer’s report, the Battalion had applied for enough brushwood and sleepers to build a rough causeway.
Owing to transport misunderstandings and difficulties, only a very small proportion of this material arrived in time. It was, however, decided still to chance the short cut. Brushwood had been laid in some of the worst places and the ground had a firm top. It was thought probable that this would, after all, bear the weight of the Tanks.
Alas, the hope was vain! The smooth turf proved to be no more than a crust, covering a veritable bog, and it broke through when the column was about halfway across. In the darkness six Tanks floundered one after another into the morass.
The scene which followed is described by an officer who was present: