Tanks had greatly assisted the Gordons and Black Watch at Frezenberg, they had dealt effectively with concrete dug-outs; with the 55th Division they had broken the wave of an enemy counter-attack at Winnipeg, and everywhere their moral effect on the enemy had been of great assistance. Twenty-four Tanks had been put out of action by bad going or shell-fire.
A third Corps with fewer machines had in many cases reached their objective without being held up. The Tanks had in these cases merely followed the infantry, but they reported that without Tanks the capture of the strongly wired position of Alberta would have cost the 39th Division dear, and that on the Steenbeek near Ferdinand Farm the enemy, who had bolted at the mere sight of a Tank, had been “dealt with” at ease with a machine-gun by infantry of the 51st Division.
Upon these Summaries and upon later failures the Commander of the 5th Army was subsequently to base a generally unfavourable report upon Tanks.
The report may be condensed into a simple syllogism:—
1. Tanks were unable to negotiate bad ground.
2. The ground on a battlefield will always be bad.
3. Therefore Tanks are no good on a battlefield.
He added to this, that being no longer a surprise to the enemy, he considered that Tanks had lost their moral effect, and had no value used in masses.
This report was not officially presented for some weeks, but the Higher Tank Command must early have perceived the drift of affairs. The events of the first day and the manner in which those events were interpreted gave only too much data to the prophetic spirit. The junior Tank personnel knew little of what was going on. Like Burns’s mouse, they were only touched by the present, the throwing away of what had cost them so many weeks of toil. To the Higher Tank Command was reserved Burns’s own fate:
“But, och! I backward cast my ee