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Whether you justly appraise the contribution of the Tank Corps towards the final victory is for history to declare—at some interval yet—but I am hardy enough to give you a parable in the terms of a great national pastime.
Rugby football of all games affords the closest analogy to war—to warfare on the Western Front the parallel, without labouring the detail, is remarkable.
In the early nineties the accepted tactics of the game demanded a distribution of the team into nine forwards and six backs. The orthodox believed in forward play, and in emergency sometimes even a tenth forward would be added at the expense of one back.
At this time there occurred in the annual matches between two countries an uninterrupted series of defeats for one. As a measure of resource or despair, I do not know which, a new distribution was made in its forces. Instead of nine, eight forwards were played, one back was added—the fourth three-quarter.
The tactics were for the forwards to hold the opposing attack and for the backs to play offensively. The game is historic. For three-quarters of the match the nine forwards pressed the eight heavily, and these were very hard put to it to maintain their lines. In the last phase of the game one of the four three-quarters got away unmarked, the game was won and lost.
That was twenty-five years ago. The rules of the game remain unchanged, but the distribution of the players has been modified and the tactics of teams have developed on the lines of that historic match and beyond.
Whether the parallel of the Tank Corps to the extra three-quarter is a completely true one history will record in due season. What, however, we may claim is that the fourth three-quarter after a nervous start, in which perhaps he was sometimes out of his place, nevertheless on more than one occasion got away unmarked; that he ran straight even when he was being heavily tackled and drew the opposition for his side; that he went down well to the rushes of the German forwards; and that, finally, he more than once handled the ball in the great combined run which took his team from within its own twenty-five over the opponents’ goal line.
Yours sincerely,
