A New Excalibur: The Development of the Tank 1909-1939 by A J Smithers

Author:A J Smithers [Smithers, A J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473807075
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
Published: 1985-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

* * *

‘Did we really send men to fight in that?’

SIX VALUABLE WEEKS PASSED between the end of the Messines battles and the opening of the next series. The Germans wasted none of them. A lightly-held outpost zone lay in front of a proliferation of pill-boxes. With a water table only just below the surface it was not the country for digging trenches and deep shelters in the Somme fashion.

Harsh things have been said of Sir Douglas Haig about his decision to attack over this part of Flanders. The unhappy man was under much pressure from outside. From Jellicoe at the Admiralty came the cry that unless the Belgian sea-coast was cleared the U-boats would win the war for the Kaiser in a very short time. From Pétain came another cry, nearly though not quite as urgent. The French Army was in a state of mutiny and might disintegrate if attacked. The duet demanded that the Field-Marshal do something to prevent these unthinkable things from happening.

Stand, if you have not already done so, at Tyne Cot Cemetery on Passchendaele Ridge and look towards the middle of the saucer upon whose eastward rim you are. There, at what seems only a drive and a chip shot from you, are the ramparts of Ypres and the towers of its now restored buildings. Between is a formless network of drainage ditches. It used to be the law, very probably it still is the law, that any farmer who neglected these would be brought before the magistrates and fined. They alone prevent the country relapsing into its ancient wetland. Not far away, almost exactly six hundred years before Plumer’s and Gough’s battles, a French Army under Louis X had arrived to chastise the recalcitrant Flemish weavers. His horsemen sank into the mud under the weight of their armour before a blow was struck. Look across at Ypres through the light mist that is usually about and you will stand amazed that any soldiers could ever have crossed such a place and wrenched the heights under you from a brave and competent enemy.

Baker-Carr, his brigade unused at Messines, was told before he left the Arras front that an attack around Ypres would be made in July. He was horrified, for ‘it was inconceivable that this part of the line should have been selected. If a careful search had been made from the English Channel to Switzerland, no more unsuitable spot could have been discovered.’ The drainage system had, for obvious reasons, been untended for a couple of years and the near-polder land had been comprehensively shelled by both sides. ‘The result was that many square miles of land consisted merely of a thin crust of soil, beneath which lay a bottomless sea of mud and water.’ It would be a thousand times worse when the stupendous bombardment being planned had stirred it around. ‘I never met one single soul who anticipated success, with the exception of GHQ.’ At that rarefied level there was some

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.