Читать книгу The Tank Corps - Clough Williams-Ellis - Страница 23

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By February 1917, when individual courses came to an end and unit training began, the H.B.M.G.C. was about 9000 strong.

Warmed by the sun of official approval, and watered with a kindly dew of Memoranda and official “definitions,” Companies had budded into Battalions and later Battalions were to burgeon into Brigades.

Even by this early date the authorities had decided that ultimately three Brigades of three Battalions each should be formed.

Each Battalion was to be equipped with seventy-two machines and to consist of four fighting sections, a Headquarters Section and a Battalion Workshop, besides that curious collection of miscellaneous individuals, tailors, barbers, shoemakers and clerks, which is necessary in every unit. General Elles was to command in France, and took over on September 29 with the rank of Colonel. His “charter” was as follows:

“The Headquarters in France is to command the Heavy Branch M.G.C. in the field, to be responsible for the advanced training and for the Tactical employment of the Corps under the command of the C.-in-C.”

He was also to have a large Central Depot and Repairing Shop in his charge.

In England there was to be a Headquarters directly under the War Office and which was to administer the Corps as a whole. The home Headquarters was to be responsible for the provision of men, for supplies of “technical material,” the preliminary training of units, and the maintenance of units in France as regards men, machines, material and spare parts.

The experienced reader will perceive in this system of dual control a very promising sowing of dragon’s teeth.

No one who has had an inside knowledge of the growth of any unit or of any institution whatsoever during the War will be surprised at the fact that the Tank Corps did not escape the common lot. It suffered from growing pains.

Is there a new Ministry, a new Hospital, a new Factory, a new Battalion, nay, a single new Committee, the tiniest Association of Allotment Holders, the smallest Village Ladies’ Work Depot, that did not?

Among such organisations there are but two categories—those who have the candour to acknowledge that they went through such a period, and those who still dare not trust themselves to allude to it. Perhaps if we consider the examples that come within our own experience, we shall find that the stronger and more vital the new unit, the more capable and full of character the men who moved it, the more marked was that initial stage of uncomfortable adolescence.

The settling down, before responsibilities and prerogatives had been properly paired and allotted to the right individuals. The time when one department was still irritable from overwork and another exasperated by not being given enough responsibility. We have all of us known such a time, and most of us now look back upon its very real miseries with a kind of mingled wonder and amusement. Not otherwise do the pioneers of the Tanks look back upon their awkward age.

As soon as the programme of expansion had been decided upon17 the question of how Tank production could be increased became an exceedingly important one. Owing to the inevitable loss in battle, and still more to the unfortunate defects of the type of the track roller then supplied, there were not enough Tanks even for the training scheme proposed for France, where there were in December 1916 only sixteen machines in working order. The needs of the big training centre which was setting up at Wool could not at present be met at all, and the accumulation of any adequate reserve of fighting Tanks was, for the moment, impossible.

The Mechanical Warfare Supply Department was now responsible for Tank production, and they had the task of arranging for the building of the 1000 Tanks which had been sanctioned on September 29.

In November the M.W.S. Department made an unofficial forecast of the probable rate of production. This forecast they confirmed officially on February 1.

The total output of Tanks was to be roughly as follows:

1917
January	50
February	50
March	120
April	120
May	140
June	200
July	240
August	260
September	280

Of these, after March at least eighty per month were to be of the Mark IV. type, of which, with the Mark IV.a, there was to be a total of over 1000.

In August or September, a proportion of the output was to be of the greatly improved Mark V. type. Actually at the end of March only sixty Tanks could be scraped together for the Battle of Arras, and most of these were machines that had been repaired after the Somme.

Not a single Mark IV. machine arrived in France until April 22, after the Battle of Arras had been fought and won, and no Mark V. machines until March 23, 1918. The entire programme was, in short, many months late.

The M.W.S.D. were, however, not altogether blameable for the occasionally somewhat astonishing discrepancy between their promises and performance.

It is, in fact, related for the defence that even the airy promises had their purpose—that the very discrepancies which the Fighting Side viewed aghast were deliberately created by the wily M.W.S.D. as bogies with which to scare supine manufacturers or reluctant Government Departments.

“What!” the M.W.S.D. would say. “You can’t do better than that! But look what we’ve actually promised! And just see what sort of names our partners the Fighting Side are calling us already! You must do better.” A duly enraged Fighting Side must have made an unsurpassable Jorkins.

In any case, however, it was usually only the M.W.S.D.’s promises which could even be called in question. Considering the means at their disposal and the difficulties which surrounded them, their practical efforts were praiseworthy.

Their troubles came chiefly from three sources. Some of the difficulties from each were inevitable, and some were not.

First there were the physical difficulties of manufacture. The shortage both of labour and material was acute, and at the period with which we are now concerned, Tanks came low in the Ministry of Munitions’ priority list. Shells, guns, aeroplanes and even transport lorries all took precedence of Tanks.

A second difficulty was the habit which the Authorities had of blowing alternately hot and cold, according as Tanks momentarily did well or ill in the field. This resulted in a tendency towards a see-saw of alternate periods of slackness and overwhelming hurry in the factories.

Tradition relates that Sir Albert Stern (the Director-General of the M.W.S.D.) here played a most useful part. He used his whole influence to maintain a steady output, acting, in fact, as a kind of stabiliser.

The third set of difficulties came from the M.W.S.D.’s own Tank designers, and from technical experts of the Fighting Side in France. Both constantly asked for small alterations in design. Often these alterations were necessary; frequently they were more or less frivolous even when they came from what might be considered the best source, that is, from those who fought the Tanks.

If the M.W.S.D. was sometimes accused of adopting an academic attitude towards the results of the “acid test” of battle, it may as truly be said of the Fighting Side that they often underrated the difficulties and problems of manufacture and failed to appreciate how often quality could only be obtained by a disproportionate sacrifice of quantity.