Читать книгу The Tank Corps - Clough Williams-Ellis - Страница 12

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Not till Act III. do we get the opening of the main plot of our drama. For it was only at the end of March, 1916 that recruiting for the new arm began, and therefore that “The Fighting Side” first appeared.

5“At the end of March certain officer cadets with engineering experience and drawn from the 18th, 19th, and 21st Royal Fusiliers, were asked to volunteer their services for what they were given to understand was an experimental armoured car unit. (The Armoured Car Section of the Motor Machine Gun Corps.)

“Those who decided to throw in their lot with the new Service were interviewed by Colonel Swinton and Colonel Bradley, who, in the course of their examination, threw out no hints as to further details relative to the new unit. Results of these interviews were communicated on the Thursday before Easter Friday, when successful volunteers were informed that they were to be granted temporary commissions in the M.M.G.C., and were despatched the same morning to report to the M.M.G.C. Headquarters at Bisley. Upon arrival further information was received from the Adjutant that short leave would be granted for the purpose of obtaining kit, and that all officers would report their return with kit, on the following Tuesday evening.

“During the week that followed Easter the two first selected Companies, i.e., ‘K’ and ‘L,’ were formed, officers being posted to one or other of the Companies.”

Specially selected officers and men of the original M.M.G.C. formed the nucleus of these Companies, and the Companies were formed into a Battalion as further reinforcements arrived. On the Monday after Easter Bank Holiday training began, instructions being given in the use of the Vickers and Hotchkiss .303 Machine Guns and later in the Hotchkiss 6-pounder Naval gun.

An officer who arrived in about the second batch tells how he and another man from the same regiment were sent down to Bisley after the usual brief but formidable interview with Colonel Swinton. They arrived at Brookwood Station only to be told that the ever mysterious Motor Machine Gun Corps had left two days before for Siberia.

Tableau!

“Siberia” proved, however, to be a camp not so far from Bisley as to be beyond the radius of the station cab in which they both presently set off.

No Tanks were, of course, yet available for training, and therefore instruction was concentrated upon the use of the three guns, “each officer, N.C.O. and man being required to pass out at the examination.”

6“With the above exception, physical drill and an occasional route march, no further training of military character was imposed; thus in the early summer of 1916 practically all the personnel of the new branch of the service were efficient in the manipulation of the three guns in question. During the whole of the foregoing period no further information other than widely different rumours could be obtained by the junior personnel of the Unit as to the purposes for which they, or the experimental armoured car, would be used.”

About June it became increasingly evident that if the Land Cruisers were to be fought that year, production must be accelerated.

“A very limited number of officers, N.C.O.’s and men, totalling about one dozen, were despatched to Lincoln and other centres, where they were employed in connection with what they later understood to be Tank production.”

Meanwhile, a very carefully chosen and elaborately prepared training area had been organised on Lord Iveagh’s estate near Thetford, and as soon as information came that the first machines would soon be available for training, the Battalion was again moved.

This time the still mystified companies found themselves in a camp more ringed about than was the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, and more zealously guarded than the Paradise of a Shah. Three rows of plantations and shelter belts guarded them from the eyes of the profane, and the intruder or the breaker of camp must pass six lines of sentries assisted by cavalry patrols.

A highroad which ran through the training ground was closed, and all inhabited farms within the area were evacuated. No civilians were allowed under any pretext to pass the guard, nor were troops allowed to leave the area except on production of special passes which were very difficult to get.

Once an aeroplane from a neighbouring aerodrome flew over, moved by a friendly spirit of inquiry. It was immediately greeted with a hail of machine-gun bullets and was obliged to depart in some haste.

For now the Tanks had to appear in their true character as fighting machines, and needed a better screen than Russian Fairy Tales. The machines had been long expected. Almost daily some one in the camp had “heard” an unfamiliar engine throb, and when this happened the entire camp would rush out to see if “they” had come.

The wildest rumours were afoot.

The car could climb trees! It could swim! It could jump like a flea!

Any one who has lived in an ordinary camp where there were no secrets and remembers what rumours flourished on the most ethereal food, can imagine their growth in a camp where there was a real mystery.

But at last, towards the beginning of June, a limited number of Mark I. machines were detrained at a special railhead within the area.7 The training of the Battalion now began in earnest. Machines and men were destined to be launched in little over six weeks’ time into the then newly begun Somme offensive.

Two types of Tank were detrained, “Big Willie” and “Little Willie.” The Mark I. (Big Willie) was very different from the Mark V. machine described in Chapter I.

It took four men to drive it. It had an unwieldly two-wheeled tail, or to give this appendage its official name, a “Hydraulic Stabiliser.” By this device it could let itself down gently over a drop of over 5 ft., and partly with the aid of it, the machine was steered.

In practice, compared with the handy Mark V., the whole steering arrangement of the Mark I. was extraordinarily clumsy and laborious. She would not turn sharply at all on rough ground, and had to be coaxed to any change of direction. Her engine and tracks also needed constant adjustment, the rollers being an everlasting source of trouble. Drivers and mechanics who have handled both machines, seem to regard the running of a Mark V. as child’s-play after struggling with the caprices of “Mother.”

“Little Willie” was used only as a training Tank, as in practice he was found to have a defective balance. His centre of gravity was misplaced, and he was, besides, too short for the work of crossing trenches.