In the battle of Flanders they had plenty of chance to show what they could do. The way of the allied advance was hindered by a number of little concrete forts built in the ruins of farmsteads, which had withstood the British gunfire. At Plum Farm and Apple Villa and in the stronger and more elaborate fortified points like Frezenberg and Pommern Castle and Pommern Redoubt the German machine gunners held out when everything about them was chaos and death, and played a barrage of bullets on the advancing Allies. Platoons and half platoons attacked them in detail at great cost of life, and it was in such places that the tanks were of the most advantage.
It was at Pommern Castle, east of St. Julien, that one of the tanks did its best. Do not imagine the castle as a kind of structure with big walls and portcullis and high turrets, but slabs of concrete in a huddle of sandbags above a nest of deep dugouts. On the other side of it was Pommern Redoubt, of the same style of defense.
The British were fighting hard for the castle and having a bad time under its fire. A tank came to help them and advanced under the swish of bullets to the German emplacements, lurching up the piled bags over the heaped-up earth and squatting on the top like a grotesque creature playing the old game of "I'm king of the castle. Get down, you dirty rascals."
The "dirty rascals," who were German soldiers, unshaven and uncovered in the wet mud, did not like the look of their visitors, who were firing with great ferocity. They fled to the cover of Pommern Redoubt, beyond. Then the tank moved back to let the infantry get in, but as soon as it turned its back the Germans, with renewed pluck, took possession of the castle again.
The men who were fighting round about again gave the signal to the tank to "get busy" so it came back, and, with the infantry on its flanks, made another assault, so that the Germans fled again.
The Pommern Redoubt was attacked in the same way, with good help from the tanks.
Frezenberg Redoubt was another place where the tanks were helpful, and they did good work at Westhoek.
One of them attacked and helped to capture a strong point west of St. Julien from which a good many Germans came out to surrender. Afterward some tanks went through the village, but they had to get out again in a hurry to escape capture in the German counterattacks.
It was not easy to get back in a hurry, as by that hour in the afternoon the rain had turned the ground to a swamp and the tanks sank deep in it with the wet mud half-way up their flanks and slipped and slithered back when they tried to struggle out. Many of the officers and crew had to get out of their steel forts, risking the heavy shelling and machine-gun fire, to dig their way out; and in the neighborhood of St. Julien they worked for two hours in the open to debog their tank, while the Germans tried to destroy them by direct hits.
In a farm somewhere in this neighborhood no fewer than sixty Germans came out with their hands up in surrender as soon as a tank was at close quarters. The story is told that at another place the mere threat of a tank's approach was enough to decide a party of eight to give in. It is certain beyond all doubt that the German infantry has great fear of the "beasts."