During the winter of 1916 and 1917 instructions were issued on anti-tank defence. These were based on the following entirely erroneous ideas:
(i) That tanks were largely dependent on roads.
(ii) That tanks would approach the German lines in daylight.
(iii) That tanks were impervious to machine-gun fire.
These led to the Germans depending on road obstacles such as pits and indirect artillery fire; as a matter of fact, at this time the most potent weapon which could have been used against tanks was the machine gun firing A.P. bullets. That the Mark I tank was not proof against these bullets was not discovered until April 1917, after the British failure at Bullecourt. This discovery was of little use, for by the time the next battle was fought, Messines, a tank with thicker armour, the Mark IV, had replaced the Mark I.
It is evident that throughout this period the German Higher Command gave little thought to the tank question and quite failed to appreciate the possibilities of the machine. Prisoners were questioned and rough sketches, many grotesque in the extreme, were obtained from them and published for information. What information they imparted was misleading; in fact, the whole attitude of the German General Staff, during this period, may be summed up as “stupidity tempered with ridicule.”
During 1917 the German grew to realise that artillery formed the chief defence against tanks. Great prominence was given to indirect fire by all types of guns and howitzers, and in spite of several dawn attacks the enemy laid great stress on what he called “Distant Defence.” As actual operations proved, indirect artillery fire produced little effect save on broken-down machines. Partially learning this, the Germans resorted to special anti-tank guns, and on an average, two, protected by concrete, were emplaced on each divisional front; these were in certain sectors supplemented by captured Belgian and old German guns. Fixed anti-tank guns proved, however, of little use, for though a few tanks were knocked out by them, notably at Glencorse wood on the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres, they generally were destroyed by our terrific initial bombardments. Curiously enough, though both indirect fire and fixed guns proved a failure, little consideration was, at this time, given to the simplest form of artillery action against tanks, namely—direct fire by field guns.
Infantry anti-tank defence, during 1917, was negligible and chiefly consisted in instructions how to “keep its head” and to leave the rest to the artillery; the use of bundles of stick bombs was recommended, and though A.P. bullets received no great support, the effect of the splash of ordinary S.A.A. was not realised in the least degree.
Prior to the battle of Cambrai (November 1917) the true anti-tank defence had been mud, mud produced by gun fire and rain. At this battle the enemy was caught completely unawares, his anti-tank defence was slight; but a feature of the operation was the improvised defence put up by a few of the enemy’s field guns, which inflicted heavy casualties on tanks, especially at Flesquières. In general, however, the enemy realised the ineffectiveness of his anti-tank defence, yet curiously enough he at present showed no decided inclination to adopt direct field-gun fire as its backbone. In spite of the fact that the incident of a German battery, served by an officer, putting a considerable number of tanks out of action had received mention in the British dispatches, still the enemy remained oblivious to the utility of direct fire, and in place of praising his gunners, as we did, he praised troops from Posen who had put up a determined resistance against tanks in Fontaine Notre Dame.
The German counter-attack on November 30, 1917, which resulted in the capture of a considerable number of tanks, seems to have entirely allayed any anxiety created by the attack on the 20th; for though the question of anti-tank defence was given rather more prominence than heretofore, no greater practical attention was paid to it during the winter of 1917–1918 than during the one previous to it.