And now the battle increases everywhere in violence. We hear that on this side of Beaucourt some strong reserves, collected there by the Germans, have just been surrounded and taken prisoners. A whole brigade staff has fallen into the hands of the English. More than 5,000 prisoners have been counted already. It will take at least two days to count all that have been taken. A genuine victory!
The "tanks" have played an honourable part in the battle, and I have just seen two of them at work. My impressions may be summed up in these words: a huge amazement and satisfaction.
One of them, which has been christened The Devil's Delight, did marvels at Beaucourt. This deliberate leviathan, having placed itself boldly at the head of the advancing flood of men, took up its position at the entrance of the ruined village. At first the Germans fled. Then, one by one, they came back. With machine-guns, bombs, rifles and mortars they endeavoured to pierce its double shell. Nothing availed. Squatted on its tail, the terrific tank lorded it there like a king on his horse. It made no objection whatever to being approached. Some sappers tried to place bombs under it, to blow it sky high. Inside it the crew shammed dead. The Germans took heart. Ten, twenty, thirty men, armed with screw-jacks and mallets laboured to overthrow it. But what could even two battalions have accomplished against this patient mastodon, whose skin was steel and whose weight was 800 tons? A colonel, mad with rage, fired the eight barrels of his revolver at it, point-blank. If the tank could have laughed it must have burst with delight. Its sense of humour is a strictly warlike one.
After a full quarter of an hour of silence the Germans, believing that the crew had been destroyed and that the monster was helpless, surrounded it boldly and in considerable numbers. Thereupon, unmasking its machine-guns, and opening fire from its sides, the terrible creature began to hack them in bits, mow them down in heaps, drill them full of holes and slay them by the dozen.
A giant miller, grinding death!
An hour later, when the larger part of the English troops succeeded in reaching Beaucourt, they found the Germans, dead and dying, piled around the tank. The tank says little, but to the point.
Three cheers for Mademoiselle Devil's Delight!
[CHAPTER III.]
THE REAL SUPERMEN.