“Never shall I forget the scene at Achicourt on the eve of the battle. It was round about midnight when I got there and pitch dark save for the fitful light from the still burning village[19] near by and the flashes of the guns.
“We had got word of ‘trouble near the railway crossing,’ and trouble indeed there was.
“There, sunk and wallowing in a bog of black mud, were some half-dozen Tanks—Tanks that should by then have been miles ahead and getting into their battle position for the attack at dawn.
“Instead, here were the machines on which so much depended, lying helpless and silent at all sorts of ominous angles, and turned this way and that in their vain struggles to churn their way out of the morass.
“About them were great weals and hummocks of mud and ragged holes brimming with black slime. The crews, sweating and filthy, were staggering about and trying to help their machines out by digging away the soil from under their bellies and by thrusting planks and brushwood under their tracks. Now and again an engine would be started up and some half-submerged Tank would heave its bulk up and out in unsteady floundering fashion, little by little and in wrenching jerks as the engine was raced and the clutch released.
“Then the tracks of a sudden would cease biting and would rattle round ineffectively, the ground would give way afresh on one side, and the Tank would slowly heave over and settle down again with a perilous list, the black water awash in her lower sponson. No lights could be shown on account of enemy observation, and at any time he might reopen with his heavy artillery, which had already been blasting the immediate neighbourhood earlier in the night.
“Altogether it was a desperate and discouraging business for those of us who knew that there were infantry already assembled for the morning’s assault who had practised with us, who looked to us for a lead across the German wire, and who must now do as best they might without us.”
In the event, however, it did not turn out as blackly as those at the Achicourt slough had feared.
Had the approach march of the Tanks been run to time, the column would almost certainly have come in for the blowing up of the ammunition dump at Achicourt, which was hit and exploded by a German shell soon after nightfall.
Also, the half-dozen Tanks that were extricated from the bog too late to join in that morning’s attack, provided a small local reserve that later proved of the utmost value and had an appreciable effect on the course and ultimate issue of the battle.