Читать книгу The Tank Corps онлайн

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The battle had now been in progress for nearly ten weeks. We had advanced and occupied a depth of four miles of devastated country.

Most of the men and many of the officers had not been to France before. They found themselves in a strange world. Endless lines of transport crawled over incredibly bad roads bordered by gaunt stumps of trees and by a sordid and tragic litter of dead men and horses, rags, tin cans, rotting equipment, and derelict transport.

The enemy was counter-attacking over the whole of the thirty-mile front, and the sound of our guns was everywhere. At night the stream of lorries never ceased, and at some point or other in our line, far away, a star shell could always be seen sailing up from behind a rise of ground, giving some fringe of shattered wood, or ruined sugar factory, a fleeting silhouette against its cold white light.

All ranks were desperately busy, from the mechanics who had new spare engine parts to adjust, to those in command who had their own minds and those of several Major-Generals to make up. Colonel Brough had commanded when the Tanks disembarked, but had now handed over to Colonel Bradley, and he and the Army Corps, and Divisional Commanders with whom he conferred on the 13th seem, perhaps inevitably, to have been as uncertain how to wield the new weapon as were the Tank Commanders of such details as how to fit their new camouflage covers or anti-bombing nets.