Читать книгу The Tank Corps - Clough Williams-Ellis - Страница 14

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It must have been with some sense of having taken a momentous step that the authorities sanctioned the manufacture of 150 Tanks after witnessing the trials at Hatfield.

We were short of men and short of steel, and to divert steel from shells and men from the infantry was a grave decision. Our rulers were for a moment, perhaps, granted the gift of prevision. They saw that the new weapon might prove the sword that was ultimately to tip the level balance, and to break the intolerable equilibrium which had settled on the line from the Alps to the sea.

This prophetic mood did fitfully visit the authorities.

For a few months they would, as it were, have faith, and personnel would be granted and machines would be ordered.

Then perhaps for half a precious year they would relapse and backslide and revert, till Colonel Swinton, the Fighting Side, and all the other missionaries and preachers of the Tank Corps almost despaired.

But in February 1916 there was much to uphold them. The situation demanded some desperate remedy.

The balance hung deadly level. We could hold the Germans now, but for how long? The race for the coast had been a draw, and the First Battle of Ypres had ended open warfare on the Western Front.

10“Quick-firing field guns and the machine-guns used defensively, proved too strong for the endurance of the attackers, who were forced to seek safety by means of their spades rather than through their rifles. Whole fronts were entrenched, and, except for a few small breaks, a man could have walked by trench, had he wished to, from Nieuport almost into Switzerland.”

The Germans were dug in.

11“And with the trench came wire entanglements—the horror of the attack—and the trinity of trench, machine-gun, and wire made the defence so strong that each offensive operation was brought to a standstill.

“The problem which then confronted us was a two-fold one:

“Firstly, how could the soldier in the attack be protected against shrapnel, shell-splinters and bullets? Helmets were reintroduced, armour was tried, shields were invented, but all to no great purpose.

“Secondly, even if bullet-proof armour could be invented, which it certainly could, how were men laden down with it going to get through the wire entanglements which protected every position?”

It was, in fact, impossible for infantry alone to attack such positions without the most extensive artillery preparation. The enemy and his trenches and his wire must be blown out of the ground. This was the accepted answer to the problem of the deadlock. But as yet we had not got the shells. We were straining every nerve to reach the solution by bombardment, but in February 1916 we had not got the necessary ammunition. Was there no other answer to the problem? Nothing that could be done meanwhile?

This was the mood in which the missionaries of the “mobile machine-gun destroyer” found the High Command. Had we had shells in February 1916 we should not have had the Tank. We must have waited another year for it, till, in fact, we had found out the defects of the hoped-for solution by bombardment.

The German, who was full fed with ammunition, felt at this early date no urging to go out and seek any such fantastic remedy. His High Command would have laughed at the idea of Tanks as Dives may have laughed at hungry Lazarus’ antics over broken victuals.