Bodger stuck to his perch, though the shell-splinters whanged on the armour, and got off with nothing worse than a chipped ear. After this he became a tank enthusiast, and when his major was promoted Admiral of the Fleet and hoisted his flag in the Mammoth, Bodger succeeded to the command of the Mastodon. He painted her in a beautiful chromatic color-scheme, and fitted a larder and a cushioned beer-bin. He worked up his crew at gunnery till they could hit a Boche parapet while bumping across country. He enjoyed four solid meals a day and ceased to repine at his increasing weight.
The Big Push came on, and Bodger's Mastodon proved the smartest landship in the fleet, while at gunnery she could have given points to the Excellent. There came a day when we had pierced deeply into the German lines, and with it came Bodger's chance, which has made his name in the Land Fleet. He saw a locomotive half a mile in front dragging off a couple of howitzers along a light railway, and, regardless of his admiral's warning toots he made for it across the trenches.
Furious Germans tried to rush him as he ploughed through their lines but he held the Mastodon to her course, spouting flame on both broadsides. Field guns were hurriedly turned on him, but the shells missed or glanced from the armour. He headed off the locomotive by a bare 50 fathoms, and, reversing his starboard chain, jockeyed the Mastodon sharply round to meet it.
Now when a 60-ton locomotive hauling double its weight of heavy howitzer, meets a 100-ton tank, both all out, something is almost certain to happen. This time it was the unexpected.
The antagonists stood on their tails, locked for a moment like wrestlers, and then suddenly disappeared from view. The railway crossed a hollow road at the point of encounter and the bridge had given way. Down went the locomotive, wheels uppermost, with the Mastodon on top of it. The trucks with the monster howitzers lumbered up and pitched on top of the heap. But the tank, though dented like an old tin can, was little the worse, and the Germans, who expected to find a wreck, were met by shells and machine-gun fire.
There was no holding our men that day, and they pressed on well beyond the hollow road where the Mastodon had "brought up." When the leading battalion reached her they found Bodger lunching on deck, with a dozen bottles of beer standing ready for his visitors. He was asked to describe his trip across the German trenches, but preferred to expatiate on the perfections of his cushioned beer-bin. "Only two bottles broken, and I believe one of them had gone flat!"
A new 1,000-horsepower tank, carrying a 6 inch gun, is ready for launching, and Bodger will command her. He is looking forward to steering her through the streets of Berlin.
IV—STORY OF THE BATTLE MONSTERS AT FALL OF THIEPVAL
Told by Percival Phillips, with British Army in France
The capture of the greatest Prussian stronghold between the Ancre and the Somme involved hard and bitter fighting. Nowhere on the western front have the Prussian troops made stronger resistance against odds or given greater trouble in their underground lairs, dugouts and tunnels. We know now that the Prussian lines yielded many marvellous examples of catacomb work beneath the hills and valleys of Northern France for the shelter of their battalions. The British troops spoke to-day soberly and impressively of scenes in the buried fortress that lies below the blasted ridge.