It is almost impossible to give any idea of the difficulty of these latter operations or of the “grit” required to carry them out. Roads, if they could be called by such a name at all, were few and far between in the salient caused by the repeated attacks during the battle. This salient had a base of some 20,000 yards and was only 8,000 deep at the beginning of October, at which date the enemy could still obtain extensive observation over it from the Passchendaele ridge. The ground in between these roads being impassable swamps, all movement had to proceed along them, consequently they formed standing targets for the German gunners to direct their fire on. One night, at about this period of the battle, a tank engineer officer was instructed to proceed to Poelcappelle to superintend the demolition of some tanks which were blocking the road near the western entrance to the village. His description of it at night-time is worth recording.
“I left St. Julien in the dark, having been informed that our guns were not going to fire. I waded up the road, which was swimming in a foot or two of slush, frequently I would stumble into a shell-hole hidden by the mud. The road was a complete shambles and strewn with debris, broken vehicles, dead and dying horses and men. I must have passed hundreds of them as well as bits of men and animals littered everywhere. As I neared Poelcappelle our guns started to fire: at once the Germans replied, pouring shells on and around the road, the flashes of the bursting shells were all round me. I cannot describe what it felt like, the nearest approach of a picture I can give is that it was like standing in the centre of the flame of a gigantic Primus stove. As I neared the derelict tanks, the scene became truly appalling: wounded men lay drowned in the mud, others were stumbling and falling through exhaustion, others crawled and rested themselves up against the dead to raise themselves a little above the slush. On reaching the tanks I found them surrounded by the dead and dying; men had crawled to them for what shelter they would afford. The nearest tank was a female, her left sponson doors were open, out of these protruded four pairs of legs, exhausted and wounded men had sought refuge in this machine, and dead and dying lay in a jumbled heap inside.”
Whatever history may record of the Third Battle of Ypres, one fact certainly will not be overlooked or forgotten, namely: that men who could continue for three months to attack under the conditions which characterised this most terrible battle of the war must indeed belong to an invincible stock.
CHAPTER XVI
TANK MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
The organisation of the “mechanical engineering” side of the Tank Corps constituted the backbone of the whole formation, for on its efficiency depended the efficiency of the fighting units in as high a degree as the fighting efficiency of a cavalry regiment depends on its horse-mastership.
In this chapter it is not intended to follow the growth of this organisation in detail, but rather to look back on its evolution as a whole, and then to enter upon a few particulars of the work accomplished by it. Before doing so it must be clearly understood that the mechanical engineering side of the Tank Corps was as much a product of this Corps as the fighting organisation itself, as there was in the Army no definite Mechanical Engineering Department to draw inspirations from. The nearest was the R.A.S.C., but a very wide gap separated the R.A.S.C. system from that adopted in the Tank Corps; both indeed dealt with petrol engines, but the tank and its requirements are as distinct from the lorry as the lorry is from the aeroplane—another mechanical weapon.
Generally speaking, the experience of the engineering side of the Tank Corps, during the two years following its inception in August 1916, has been that the most efficient organisation depends upon the maintenance of two simple principles, namely:
(i) No repairs to be carried out in the field—i.e. by fighting units.