Deborah and the War of the Tanks Read online

  This thrilling escapade must have made George’s war seem even more pedestrian, but while he was recuperating in England, word came through that a new and secret unit was seeking volunteers – and it seemed at last to offer the opportunity, metaphorically at least, to stick a German in the gizzard. The humble Holt tractor that had been hauling howitzers across France had spawned a larger and deadlier offspring: an armed and armoured fortress whose caterpillar tracks could cross broken ground and crush barbed wire, and whose guns would bring death to a defenceless enemy as they cowered in their trenches. That at least was the prospect, and it was enough to prompt George to apply to join the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps in October 1916, soon after the first tanks had gone into action on the Somme. For once his application fell on fertile ground, helped by the close links that the tank pioneers had fostered with the Army Service Corps, whose officers and men possessed the necessary skills in mechanical transport.

  The question about George’s vision never came up again: faced with such a keen and well-qualified candidate, it seems the authorities decided not to look a gift-horse in the eye. Instead, having had so many battles with the authorities, it would have amused George to know that two splendidly-named grandees were now fighting over him. The opening salvo was fired by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Ernest Alfred French Somerset Butler, 7th Earl of Carrick, who held a senior role in the Machine Gun Corps and noted that the commanding officer of the Heavy Branch was ‘anxious to obtain the services of Lt. G. R. Macdonald’, and asked: ‘Can he be spared?’ Colonel Jacynth d’Ewes FitzErcald Coke, who was a big wheel in army transportation, replied there was ‘no objection’ to him being sent as a mechanical transport (or M.T.) officer, and accordingly George was ordered to report to Bovington Camp in Dorset, which had become – and remains to this day – the British Army’s tank headquarters. At this point Colonel Coke realized the ASC was about to lose him and fired off his own salvo: ‘I thought I had made it clear that this [officer] was only being sent to carry out ordinary M.T. duties – we cannot agree to his being transferred.’24

  But the tanks had claimed their man, and George had found his destiny. The dispute was somehow resolved and he settled into the training programme that had been developed for aspiring tank commanders at Bovington. By April 1917 he was back in France, and the following month he was posted to D Battalion, which had been withdrawn following a series of frustrating and bloody encounters in the Battles of Arras and Bullecourt to an impromptu camp behind the lines at Wailly, later an important base for training but then ‘nothing but a broken down, war-scarred village’. The description comes from Captain Edward Glanville Smith, who had won the Military Cross when his tank was knocked out at Bullecourt, and noted that their losses were now being made up: ‘Three more reinforcement officers joined 12 Company at Wailly, viz. “Mac” “Vosges” and “Mactosh”.’25

  The nicknames, like George’s (‘Mac’), give a clue to the public school ethos that prevailed in the officers’ mess. The other new officers included ‘Mactosh’ (though he preferred the shorter ‘Tosh’), or Second Lieutenant James Cheyne Macintosh, a nineteen-year-old graduate from South Africa whose advice has already come in useful when we were searching for Deborah in Oosthoek Wood. His experience of joining up had in some ways echoed George’s, though as the son of a South African MP he was able to pull some strings, and submitted a glowing reference from William Schreiner, the former prime minister of Cape Colony who was now South Africa’s High Commissioner in London, and a letter of introduction from General Louis Botha himself. Despite this he was turned down by the Royal Flying Corps on the familiar grounds of shortsightedness, though his vision was felt to be good enough for the Tank Corps.26

  ‘Vosges’ was the nickname of Second Lieutenant James Vose, so-called because his name sounded like that of a mountain range in Alsace which was the scene of fierce fighting early in the war. Macintosh used an even more convoluted nickname: he called him ‘Herr Von’ ‘because of a close resemblance his real name bore to that of a famous Boche air-fighter’27 (this was Werner Voss, a friend and rival of the even more famous Baron von Richthofen). Vose had followed a slightly more conventional route into the Tank Corps: a twenty-five year-old native of Bolton, he had studied at Manchester Grammar School before becoming a mechanical engineer, and in 1913 joined the Territorial Army as a private in an ambulance unit. Although they had only signed up for home defence, with the coming of war the men were asked to volunteer for service overseas and Vose found himself in Egypt, helping to defend the Suez Canal against Turkish attacks. From there they were plunged into the ill-fated expedition to Gallipoli, where Vose was wounded, and he was back at home when the call came for volunteers to join a mysterious new unit.28 The move to the Tank Corps (as it became) played to his strengths as an engineer, and also enabled him to cross a social divide: he became an officer, and in the process what was patronisingly referred to as a ‘temporary gentleman’, like many others in the Tank Corps – in other words an officer who had no conventional military background, but whose commission was a reflection of the losses and demands of war, and, it must be said, of ability rather than any inherited connections or wealth.

  Now, like George Macdonald, he found himself in Oosthoek Wood, preparing himself, his tank and his crew for their first action, while all the time the horizon thudded with gunfire and the rain intermittently sluiced down, turning their camp and the distant battlefield into a quagmire, and filling the men with a strange mixture of anticipation and foreboding.

  CHAPTER 3

  A Very Fine Lot Indeed

  So much for George Macdonald and his fellow officers, but what of the men who made up the other seven-eighths of each tank crew? These were the so-called ‘other ranks’, the private soldiers (often referred to as ‘gunners’ in the Tank Corps, though it came to the same thing), and non-commissioned officers such as sergeants, corporals and lance-corporals who were – and remain – the backbone of the British Army.

  This is a frustrating area, since there are very few records listing the crew of an individual tank, apart from in the very first actions of September 1916 when the adjutant of D Company jotted their names down in his notebook. Other than this, a combination of chance and careful research sometimes enables us to link a man to a particular tank, and in this way we can name with certainty four members of Deborah’s crew in November 1917. While we cannot be sure they were the same men who fought with D51 in the Third Battle of Ypres in August 1917, this is entirely plausible, bearing in mind that strenuous efforts were made to keep the same crews together so they could become an efficient fighting unit.

  In the words of Colonel Baker-Carr, commander of 1st Tank Brigade which included D Battalion:

  The members of a tank crew were the most highly and most widely trained men in the British Army. Every man was a skilled machine-gunner; most of them were trained six-pounder gunners; most were fully competent drivers; most, if not all, were able to read a map and steer by compass; every single man was, to a greater or lesser degree, a mechanic.

  It took many, many months to train a man to be a competent member of a crew, even from the theoretical standpoint. Actual experience in battle was further needed before he could be regarded as a real, reliable tank man.

  Each tank crew was a definite, permanent entity and was encouraged to regard itself as such. Tremendous rivalry existed between crews, with the happiest results to efficiency. If, through casualties in action, sickness, promotion, or any other cause, a tank crew lost one or more of its members, some little time elapsed before that crew regained its previous standard of efficiency and the mutual confidence which was essential for its welfare.1

  One driver experienced this when he joined the Tank Corps: ‘Each tank crew had become one of many little families; they ate, drank, worked, and slept together around their armoured steed, the absolute product of this great mechanical War. Under the conditions which existed, the family-like character of these crews, as regarde
d their everyday relationships, had no parallel in the whole British Army.’2

  So where were these men from, and how did they come to be thrown together in this extraordinary new force? The answer, as with the officers, was that they were from all over Britain and Ireland, and sometimes from further afield, and had previously served with a wide range of units, and in the early days (at least) they had volunteered to join the tanks out of a varied mixture of ambition, curiosity, disillusionment and hope.

  The so-called Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps had lofty principles for recruitment, as set out in an early report: ‘The physical and educational qualifications for the Heavy Branch were to comprise good muscular development, a high standard of intelligence and good eyesight as essentials, but short stature and such defects as flat foot or varicose veins were not of themselves to [be] a bar of selection. Mechanical knowledge or aptitude was desirable, but not indispensable.’3 However, the expansion of the unit meant a more rough-and-ready approach was often taken, and men were drafted in from other units without much choice in the matter. One of D Battalion’s gunners, Private Jason Addy, told how he was undergoing infantry training when the smallest men in his unit were selected, the only additional criterion being whether they knew anything about motorbikes.4

  Major William Watson, who we met when his tanks were being unloaded in Oosthoek Wood, described the situation when he took command of No. 11 Company:

  The men were of three classes. First came the “Old Tankers,” those who had been trained with the original companies. They had been drawn for the most part from the A.S.C.: M.T. [this was the Mechanical Transport section of the Army Service Corps, to which George Macdonald had belonged]. Some had been once or twice in action; some had not. They were excellent tank mechanists. Then came the motor machine gunners – smart fellows, without much experience of active operations. The vast majority of officers and men were volunteers from the infantry – disciplined fighting men.5

  A more personal perspective was given by Sergeant Harold Aylmer Littledale, who was a tank driver in E Battalion, the sister unit of D Battalion:

  We came from the infantry, from the cavalry, from the artillery, from the Machine-Gun Corps, the Motor-Machine guns, the Flying Corps, the Army Service Corps, and even from the navy … The spirit of adventure called most of us to the Tanks. This was not because we were any braver than our comrades-in-arms, but because our natures demanded a change to new conditions; for we were of that kind whose natures always demanded a change. And so the call for volunteers found us ready, and when the word of acceptance came, our hearts beat quickly and our hopes rose high; for we were tired of the monotony of the trenches and the monotony of the guns.6

  As his literary style suggests, Sergeant Littledale’s own background was more varied than most, having been born in India where his father – who was a professor of English Literature – helped to establish the system of primary education. The family returned to South Wales, but Harold’s own demand for change soon manifested itself, and at the age of seventeen he headed to Canada and then the USA where he became a journalist. While working for the New York Evening Post he had himself imprisoned to investigate the state of New Jersey’s gaols – a story for which he became one of the first recipients of the Pulitzer Prize. He returned from the USA to fight, serving in the infantry before transferring to the Tank Corps in September 1917.7

  Winning the Pulitzer Prize was hardly a standard qualification for a tank driver, but although Sergeant Littledale’s background was unusual by any standards, it does illustrate the tremendous range of experience found among the crews. It is noteworthy that Second Lieutenant Wilfred Bion, who was critical of many of the officers in E Battalion (including himself), was full of admiration for his men. He wrote of the unit before it left England: ‘The officers were, I thought, patchy. There were good ones there, and more came out to the front when we got to France. The others were largely men who had seen a good deal of fighting and had gone into tanks to avoid it. Later, when the tanks got into action, their low morale etc. let them down, and they were gradually weeded out … The men were a very fine lot indeed. We got a lot of training, and a good deal was expected of us.’8 (However, he later withdrew the comment that some officers wanted to avoid fighting: ‘I am ashamed and would like to cross it out.’9)

  The fact was that the inside of a tank was a democratic place, and the discomforts and dangers were the same for the officer in command – who had often originally served in the ranks – and for his crewmen, a number of whom went on to be commissioned as officers. The crew had to operate as a close-knit team, with the survival of each depending on the courage and vigilance of his comrades, or to quote Second Lieutenant Horace Birks: ‘The crews fought each action as a separate entity, relying on the mechanical efficiency of the machine and their own ready wits and stout hearts.’10 It was an overwhelming responsibility, and not everyone was capable of it; but for those who were, the experience of going into action together had an intensity that nothing in their lives would ever equal again.

  * * *

  So, what can we learn about the individual crewmen who we glimpsed at work on their tank, D51, during our clandestine visit to Oosthoek Wood? Firstly, we should expect to find among them a young man with a clear, radiant face whose tunic (assuming he was not wearing overalls) bore the blue and crimson ribbon of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, showing that despite his air of angelic innocence, he had already been decorated for bravery in battle. This was Gunner George Charles Foot, and although he was not yet twenty, he was a veteran of the very first tank action and therefore one of the ‘Old Tankers’ referred to by Major Watson.

  George Foot had been born in the thriving North London suburb of Camden, which happened to be the world centre of piano-making, and grew up surrounded by music, for his father was a clerk and then commercial traveller with a firm of musical instrument makers, and later commercial manager of Hawkes & Son, one of the precursors of Boosey & Hawkes.11 This was an era when a hardworking family could rise up the social scale through thrift and enterprise, and George’s parents were soon living in a more salubrious North London suburb, with a second home, idyllically called ‘The Roses’, in the Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden – which was connected to the capital by the Metropolitan Railway, and becoming increasingly popular with Londoners seeking to escape the cacophony of city life.

  All the signs were that George would follow his father into the music business, as his younger brother did later, but the harmony of their pre-war existence was about to be shattered, and instead he travelled to the nearby town of Aylesbury to enlist in February 1916. A number of army documents indicate he used the surname ‘Foote’, a slightly more refined spelling which hints at some social aspirations. He was posted initially to the Welsh Regiment, which may seem strange given his background, but most units were now searching far and wide for recruits, and the so-called ‘Pals’ Battalions consisting of men who had grown up and joined up together were both a rare breed and an endangered species. Like a number of his future comrades in the Tank Corps, George got his first taste of military life as a despatch-rider, carrying messages from one headquarters to another by motorcycle. It was a responsible and initially exciting role that gave an insight into the world of command, and a knowledge of the internal combustion engine that would stand him in good stead when he made his next move. Young men and motorcycles are often a dangerous combination, and George’s family recall he had a wild streak, apparently earning the nickname ‘the mad bugger of the Welsh Regiment’.12 Perhaps this explains why, in May 1916, he answered the call for volunteers to join a new and secret unit that promised even greater excitement, and so became one of the first members of the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps.13

  George was with the unit at the very start, before they had even seen a tank or knew very clearly what it was, and then when the first prototype reached them in June. He shared the glorious days when consignments of Mark I machines, s
hrouded in secrecy, were delivered by rail from factories in Lincoln and Oldbury (in the West Midlands) to the country estate near Thetford, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, which had been sealed off for their training.

  Finally, the time came for the new arm to receive its baptism of fire, and George’s D Company was one of the first units to cross to France in August and early September 1916. The Allied push on the Somme, which had begun with such high hopes on 1 July, had ground to a halt, and Sir Douglas Haig believed his new secret weapon could prove a decisive factor in the latest phase of the offensive, known as the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. There was an argument that the British should not show their hand until more tanks were available, but such was the urgency of the hour that the first twenty-five tanks from C and D Companies made their way into action on 15 September 1916.

  The story of that battle has been told many times, but suffice to say that it demonstrated both the potential and the limitations of the new weapon, and although it delivered a formidable propaganda coup, the physical gains that resulted were disappointing. Too many of the tanks suffered from mechanical failure, or became inextricably bogged down, or were knocked out by artillery fire, to provide much more than a moral benefit to the attacking infantry, though in a few cases they were able to provide valuable support and even terrify the defenders into submission.

  For George Foot, after so much preparation and anticipation, the day ended in anti-climax. The trepidation of his tank commander before the attack was recorded by the war correspondent Philip Gibbs, who did not name him but recalled meeting ‘a tiny fellow like a jockey who took me on one side and said, “I want you to do me a favour,” and then scribbled down his mother’s address and asked me to write to her if “anything” happened to him.’ Gibbs continued: ‘He and other tank officers were anxious. They had not complete confidence in the steering and control of their engines. It was a difficult and clumsy kind of gear which was apt to break down at a critical moment, as I saw when I rode in one on their field of manoeuvre. These first tanks were only experimental, and the tail arrangement was very weak.’14