On prospects drear!
And forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess and fear.”
What would be the results of the initial ill-success of the battle, and of the further Tank failures which seemed only too probable when an advance which had begun so ill was continued, after perhaps two or three inches more rain?
How were the final arbiters, G.H.Q. and the War Cabinet, going to regard such failures? Tanks had been employed under grotesque conditions, and after all, they had failed in common with every other arm. Were the events of the next few weeks to be disastrous enough to consign them irrevocably to Bottomless Perdition?
At best their hopes of expansion would most probably be nipped. Their establishment would be reduced, and Tanks would be used in petits paquets again, by ones and twos as they had been in the past, because, once more, there would never be enough machines for an effective action.
As the days wore on, and the rain continued (at the rate often of an inch a day), one of these alternative fates seemed inevitable.
The gloomy surmises of the Tank Headquarters Staff were only too well founded. The authorities were in fact suffering from one of the worst cold fits which the pilots of the Tank Corps at home and abroad ever endured.
Tank Corps Headquarters heard it all. They knew well enough that in well-informed but irresponsible London circles the remark, “I hear the Tanks are going to be abolished,” was a common one; that often in such gossip circumstances of person and date would be added.
For all this they had no certain refutation. If only Tanks could even now do something that would catch the eye of authority. Some little “show” exploit. Something that would at least make a summary condemnation unlikely. The battle would have to be continued some day. Tanks would have to play their part, but in that intolerable swamp was it likely that they would do anything except engulf themselves—literally and metaphorically—yet deeper than before?