There is a lawyer’s maxim to the effect that he who asserts must prove. Up to a point this is good counsel, but it has limits. I am not captivated by pages of print pock-marked by tiny numbers which eventually guide the persistent reader to a numbered box in some distant seat of learning. In doctoral theses such things are all very well: in books I hold them to be deprecated.
The information upon which this one is based comes from published books, official papers, unofficial papers, the experiences of my seniors of which they have told me and, towards the end, in a very small way, upon experiences of my own. The books are not all that numerous. In 1919, when memories were fresh, there appeared Stern’s Tanks: the Log-Book of a Pioneer, William-Ellis’ The Tank Corps and Fuller’s Tanks: 1914–18. All bear signs of having been written in haste but they are essential reading and have been laid under contribution. Equally, the Divisional Histories tell what men thought at the time. Admiral Murray Sueter did not publish his The Evolution of the Tank until 1937; it contains much that is informative about the earliest days. Sir Harry Ricardo’s Memories and Machines, (Constable, 1968) is of the greatest interest, and about many things other than tanks. Everything about Sir John Charteris comes from his At GHQ (Cassell 1931) and all the Churchilliana, save where the context suggests otherwise, from The World Crisis. Brigadier-General Baker-Carr’s autobiography, From Chauffeur to Brigadier (Benn, 1930) is not merely essential but a joy to read. Lieut. Mitchell tells his story in Tank Warfare (Nelson 1933).
Amongst official papers, all in the Public Record Office, I have used a very small part of Lord Kitchener’s monumental ‘The War: August 1914 to 31st May 1915’. There is no substitute for this to understanding what happened during the period. Its reference is CAB 37 5929. The CID Report and Recommendations upon ‘The Question of Caterpillar Machine-Gun Destroyers’ of 24 December, 1915, is now called CAB 42/7 XP4919. The Cabinet paper on the Madsen gun is CAB/4215 XP 4919. Under the same reference comes Sir Douglas Haig on ‘Cavalry in France’, of November, 1916.
Two sets of private papers are of first importance. Those of Sir Albert Stern are lodged with the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London. The Tank Museum at Bovington Camp has those of Major Wilson. His copy of Stern’s book with his notes on the contents is with the archives of the County of Clwyd. The Stern Papers add a little to the matters of which he treats in the book but consist mainly of routine notes and correspondence. The great value of those at Bovington is that they contain transcripts of all the proofs of evidence prepared by the claimants to the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, and copies of Wilson’s letters to various highly-placed people, mostly about his quarrel with Stern. The letters passing between him and Sir William Tritton contain nothing surprising but they demonstrate the cordiality between them.
For the between-wars period there is much to be learned from th diary of Lieut-General Sir Henry Pownall, published in edited form by Leo Cooper in 1972. Sir Basil Liddell Har’s The Tanks, published in 1959, is the locus classicus on the entire subject. Sir Giffard Martel’s Our Armoured Forces (Faber, 1945) and his 1934 book In The Wake Of The Tank are, as one would expect, important, and authoritative.