THE FOSSE
"The Tank" was the great mechanical find of the war, and it was an all-British find. High authority had many fine name-proposals for the useful monsters, but Tommy took the matter into his own hands and coined the word "Tank," and "Tank" it remained. Those who are interested in matters of language may note that the French do not use the word "Tank" but describe a "Tank" as a char d'assaut, which is accurate, but has a weak look. It is an illustration of their jealous and admirable care of their language. They will not allow foreign words to intrude if that can be avoided. We, on the other hand, are quite careless about our language. The orders of our Army in France were bespattered with French words and phrases for which there were quite good English equivalents. (Gare régulatrice for "distributing station" is one of the many scores of cases in point.) It is a pity that we are so careless in regard to our mother tongue. I made an effort once to persuade G.H.Q. that British Army orders and instructions should be put out in English without any foreign admixture, but met with little sympathy. The intrusion of French words was not so bad, but German words had an almost equal degree of hospitality.
But to return to our munitions. The hand bomb was a weapon which by 1914 we had allowed to fall out of use. The British Grenadiers no longer threw grenades. But Trench War brought back the bomb as a weapon, and our bomb was soon better than the German bomb. At the first Somme battle (1916) we showed a definite superiority in bomb supply and bomb use. This development was altogether in our favour. The bomb—beastly weapon as it is, and beastly as are the wounds it inflicts—lends its favour to the quicker brain, the prompter courage, the keener leadership. The football field and the cricket green both give a good foundation for the murderous art of bombing. As soon as we had the bombs our bombing superiority grew with every day.
An instance to illustrate bombing: For the taking of the village of Contalmaison (1916) a preliminary task was the capture of Horse Shoe trench. The attack on this was prospering when it was held up at a critical point by the unmasking of a German machine gun on our right flank. To the fire of this gun we were fully exposed, and its effect was murderous. A young cricketer rose to the occasion. Single-handed he rushed the gun with a bag of bombs, got to his distance and destroyed it with a couple of "hot returns from the outfield."
In using ammunition the B.E.F. put up some startling records. On August 8th, 1918, when our big final thrust began there were used 15,598 tons in a single day. On September 29th, 1918, there were used 23,706 tons. Here are some other big figures:
| Date. | Battle. | Amount. | ||
| 1/7/16 | Somme | 12,776 | tons | |
| 9/4/17 | Vimy | 24,706 | " | |
| 3/6/17 | Arras | 17,162 | " | |
| 7/6/17 | Messines | 20,638 | " | |
| 31/7/17 | Ypres | 22,193 | " | |
| 20/9/17} 21/9/17} | Polygon Wood | 42,156 | " |
In the depôts in France we kept a reserve of 258,000 tons of ammunition, and the issues in a normal month ran to about that figure though it varied a good deal month by month. Thus the average expenditure during the last months of 1918 was: May, 5,478 tons daily; June, 4,748 tons daily; July, 5,683 tons daily; August, 9,046 tons daily; September, 8,576 tons daily; October, 4,748 tons daily; November, 3,158 tons daily. On November 11th, the last day of the war, we used 233 tons of ammunition.