THE TANKS AT YPRES.
The Ypres Times.
217
The story of the tanks in the Salient is contained in the history of the Third Battle
of Ypres, when for more than three agonising months the Fifth British Army endured the
hardest test which any troops can be called upon to endurecostly attacks without any
apparent results. The fate of the Tank Corps hung largely upon the exploits of the tanks
in this battle. Heavy losses and, in many instances, futile attacks against bitter odds
■did not endanger the future of the infantry as an arm of the Service similarly, the
impossibility of dragging up guns, which had become securely embedded in squelching
mud, did not give rise to any conspiracy for the abolition of artillery. But the tank was
newit was nobody's childand it was only as the result of a few brilliant episodes
in the gloomy story of its part in this battle, that this new arm was eventually permitted
to come into its own. The Third Battle of Ypres did one good turn to tanksit cleared
the then official mind of many of the misconceptions concerning the uses and limitations
•of these new engines of war.
Though this was not their first entry upon the battlefield, they were looked upon in
certain quarters as a last resourcewhen in doubt (or difficulties), play tanks. It was
•entirely due to this policy, though it cannot be said to have been a mistaken one, that they
were hurried from the workshops into the stagnant shambles of the Somme on September
15, 1916, when those untried machines with their untrained crews created terror among the
enemy infantry and set up a laugh of mockery from Main German Headquarters.
On the whole, the first performance of the tanks more than justified the hopes placed in
them by their supporters, and, in spite of their elementary mechanism and the shocking
state of the ground, they gave evidence of a brilliant future when employed in accordance
with the principles laid down by Major-General Swinton and those who had made a special
study of the peculiarities and requirements of these engines. The tanks produced a
diversion on the Somme they introduced the comic-opera element into a scene which was
settling down to the most depressing phases of a sordid tragedy. The Press has made
familiar the aeroplane message A tank is walking up the High Street of Flers with
the British Army cheering behind and the correspondents resurrected the polysyllabic
■names of the weirdest antediluvian beasts, whose memory is preserved only in ancient
museums and musty volumes on the geology of bygone days, and with whom the public
is not at all familiar.
The first rifle used was a greater danger to the marksman than to the marked but
that in no way hindered development to its present day state of perfection. Similarly,
though on the Somme, at Arras and, to a less extent, at Messines imperfect machines
were employed, they werè on each occasion called upon to perform work beyond their
•capacity and, generally, contrary to the principles governing their use and though
all that can be said about the unsuitability of the Salient as a theatre for a tank performance
is totally inadequate, and the method of employing these machines violated even the most
•elementary canons of their use yet, in spite of these difficulties, which nature and man,
friend and foe, vied with each other in magnifying to an unprecedented degree, the tank
was destined to live down the libels of its detractors and take a very prominent part in the
■accomplishment of victory.
A detailed account of the policy which led to the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres
would be here out of place. The pressure upon the French and Italian fronts, the release of
the eastern armies caused by the collapse of Russia and approaching German reinforcements
•of the western frontbe the cause what it may, the result was the decision to attack in
force from the British frontand the inevitable attraction of the Belgian Coast, where the
Channel Ports loomed large before the British mind, drew the scene of operations nearer
and nearer to the sea, and finally fixed it upon the Ypres Salient.
