Tanks in the Great War, 1914-1918

by J. F. C. Fuller

The following work is the story of a great and unique adventure as heroic as the exploits of the Argonauts of old, and, though the time perhaps has not yet arrived wherein to judge the part played by tanks in the Great War, I feel that, whatever may be the insight and judgment of the eventual historian of the British Tank Corps, he will probably lack that essential ingredient of all true history—the witnessing of the events concerning which he relates.

I, the writer of this book, first set eyes on a tank towards the end of August 1916. At this time I little thought that I should eventually be honoured by becoming the Chief General Staff Officer of the Tank Corps, for a period extending from December 1916 to August 1918. The time spent during this long connection with the greatest military invention of the Great War, it is hoped, has not been altogether wasted, and the story here set forth represents my appreciation of having been selected to fill so intensely interesting an appointment.

Besides having witnessed and partaken in many of the events related, those who have assisted me in this book have all been either closely connected with the Tank Corps or in the Corps itself, they one and all were partakers in either the creation of the Corps or in the many actions in which it fought.

So much assistance have I received that I can at most but consider myself as editor to a mass of information provided for me by others. Those I more especially wish to thank amongst this goodly company are the following:

Captain the Hon. Evan Charteris, G.S.O.3, Tank Corps, for the accurate and careful records of the Corps which he compiled from the earliest days of the tank movement in 1914, to the close of the battle of Cambrai. Many of these were written under, shall I say, far from luxurious circumstances, for Captain Charteris, I feel, must have often found himself, in his shell-blasted estaminet, less well cared for than the rats of Albert and as much out of place as Alcibiades in a Peckham parlour.

When Captain Charteris forsook the “cabaret sans nom,” for some ill-disposed shell had removed half the signboard, Captain O. A. Archdale, A.D.C. to General Elles, took up the difficult task and, from March 1918 onwards, kept the Tank Corps Diary upon which Chapters [XXIX], [XXXIII], [XXXV], and [XXXVII] are founded.

Taking now the chapters seriatim, I have to thank Major G. W. G. Allen, M.C., G.S.O.2, War Office,[1] for parts of [Chapter I], and also the editors of The American Machinist and The Engineer for allowing me to quote respectively from the following admirable articles: “The Forerunner of the Tank,” by H. H. Manchester, and “The Evolution of the Chain Track Tractor”; Sir Eustace Tennyson D’Eyncourt, K.C.B., Director of Naval Construction, the Admiralty, and Major-General E. D. Swinton, C.B., D.S.O., both pioneers of the tanks, and indefatigable workers in the cause, for much of the information in Chapters [II] and [IV]; Major H. S. Sayer, G.S.0.2, War Office,[2] for [Chapter III]; Major O. A. Forsyth-Major, Second in Command of the Palestine Tank Detachment, for the reports relative to the second and third battles of Gaza, upon which Chapters [XI] and [XVII] are based; Major S. H. Foot, D.S.O., G.S.O.2, War Office,[3] my close friend and fearless assistant, for suggestions generally, and particularly in [Chapter XVI]. My thanks are also due to some unknown but far-sighted benefactor of the Tank Corps for [Chapter XX]; to Lieutenant-Colonel D. W. Bradley, D.S.O., and Brigadier-General E. B. Mathew-Lannowe, C.M.G., D.S.O., G.O.C. Tank Corps Training Centre, Wool, for information regarding the Depot in [Chapter XXI]; to the relentlessly inventive Lieutenant-Colonel L. C. A. de B. Doucet, O.C. Tank Carrier Units, and so commander of the first supply fleet which ever “set sail” on land, for information to be found in [Chapter XXII]; to Lieutenant-Colonel J. D. M. Molesworth, M.C., A.D.A.S., Tank Corps, who in spite of the scholastics gave the lie to the tag Ex nihilo nihil fit, for parts of [Chapter XXIV]; to Major R. Spencer, M.C., Liaison Officer, Tank Corps, whose unfailing charm and insight always succeeded in extracting from our brave Allies not only the glamour of great adventures but the detail of truthful occurrences, for the events described in Chapters [XXV] and [XXXVI]; to Major F. E. Hotblack, D.S.O., M.C., G.S.O.2, War Office,[4] my friend and companion, who unfailingly would guide any one over wire and shell-hole immune and unscathed, for Chapters [XXVIII], [XXXI], and [XXXIV]; to Lieutenant C. B. Arnold, D.S.O., Commander of Whippet Tank “Musical Box,” for the simple and heroic exploit related in [Chapter XXX]; to Major T. L. Leigh Mallory, D.S.O., O.C. 8th Squadron, R.A.F., whose energy resulted not only in the cementing of a close comradeship between the two supreme mechanical weapons of the age but of a close co-operation which saved many lives in battle, for much of [Chapter XXXII]; to Lieutenant-Colonel E. J. Carter, O.C. 17th Tank Armoured Car Battalion, who was as great a terror to the German Corps Commanders as Paul Jones was to the Manchester merchantmen and who had the supreme honour to break over the Rhine the first British flag—the colours of the Tank Corps—for [Chapter XXXVIII].

It was a great brotherhood, the Tank Corps, and if there were “duds” in it there certainly were not old ones, for the Commander of the Corps, Major-General H. J. Elles, C.B., D.S.O., was under forty, and most of his staff and subordinate commanders were younger than himself. Youth is apt, rightly, to be enthusiastic, and General Elles must frequently have had a trying time in regulating this enthusiasm, canalising it forward against the enemy and backward diplomatically towards our friends.

We of the Tank Corps Headquarters Staff knew what we wanted. Realising the power of the machine which the brains of England had created, we never hesitated over a “No” when we knew that hundreds if not thousands of lives depended on a “Yes.”

Modestly, looking back on the war from a comfortable armchair in London, I see clearly, quite clearly, that we were right. The war has proved it, and our endeavours were not in vain. We were right, and youth generally is right, for it possesses mental elasticity, its brains are plastic and not polarised. The mental athlete is the young man: the Great War, like all other wars, has proved this again and again. We have heard much of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, but they scoffed at the tank just as Wurmser and Alvinzi scoffed at the ragged voltigeurs of the Army of Italy with which the Little Corporal was, in 1796, about to astonish Europe. We have also astonished Europe, we who wandered over the Somme battlefield with dimmed eyes, and over the Flanders swamps with a lump in our throats.