Deborah and the War of the Tanks

Parties of Royal Engineers had begun work here the day before, repairing the shell-battered bridge in St Julien and building a new crossing nearby so that D Battalion’s tanks could negotiate the swamp where the stream had once flowed. The operation was fraught with hazard, but 184th Tunnelling Company reported: ‘The first tank crossed the road bridge at 4.am. and the 12th and last went over at 4.20.am. The bridge was satisfactory and where it gave way we filled with bricks. The area around was shelled throughout the night and the behaviour of the men was in every way excellent.’² Once through St Julien, the tanks split into two groups as planned and crawled along the approach routes to their respective starting points ready for zero hour at 4.45 a.m., when a hurricane bombardment would mark the start of the attack.

In the hours before dawn, the British front was alive with furtive movement as infantry and tanks moved into position. Just to the right of D51, Private Arthur Judd and his comrades had moved out of the front line into No Man’s Land, where positions had been taped out for them. As he explained, ‘the old idea of crowding the trenches with men before an attack is finished with – there is more room “outside,” besides, “Jerry” has these trenches registered to a nicety’.

Darkness has fallen, the stars gleam in the sky. Everything seems to be going well. With hushed movements we left our trenches some while ago and got into our positions on the tapes without mishap. In the weird glow of the Verey [sic] lights that illumined the scene we were fearful at first of being discovered, and every coloured rocket that went up elicited the whispered enquiry from someone: ‘What’s that for?’ or some gloomy individual would remark: ‘He’s rumbled us!’

But we are settled down now, we have had our rum issue and feel secure in the knowledge that ‘Jerry’ cannot know.

The night is quiet, occasionally I fall into a doze; finally must have fallen asleep.

I opened my eyes and seemed to think it looked a little lighter towards the east; had a vague notion of someone saying: ‘Another minute!’ But in the next instant the sky in the direction I was looking suddenly threw up a stab of flame.

A roll of thunder opened with a single deep boom; then steadied into a throbbing war. The shells screamed overhead so thick and fast they seemed verily to obscure the sky itself, rumbling like earthquakes behind, crashing like a thousand cymbals before us, a pillar of fire against the dark sky, a pillar of cloud against the dawn – leading us on.

It is zero hour and our barrage has fallen, blotting out the enemy bombardment with a drum-fire that makes his counter-barrage seem insignificant, there is no more fear or doubt, only an endless blast of sound, a flicker of flame in the sky, a roaring and howling of shells overhead, and a smoky pall of shrapnel. And as if clamouring to obtain a hearing in all this inferno, the machine-guns clatter with the sound as of a thousand explosive typewriters.

Our first wave of attackers drifts forward silhouetted against that pillar of fire and looking like so many marionettes worked on a string. We of the second wave must follow almost immediately. We must follow hard on the barrage and be on the enemy before he has recovered from the first shock of it.

A pause, hardly perceptible, and with marvellous precision the pillar of fire has “jumped” eighty yards ahead. I plunge forward from shell-hole to shell-hole towards that cauldron of fire, now through the fumes of burnt powder, cordite, steaming earth and falling clods, feeling uplifted with the very might our barrage, appalled at the awe-inspiring spectacle of it. How could any poor devil of a German live in it?

Yet I marvelled with every forward movement I made – ‘I am still unharmed, alive!’³

Five minutes after zero, divisional headquarters received a message from Major R.O.C. Ward: ‘All twelve tanks left starting point at zero, going well.’⁴ They were on their way, and now he could do nothing but wait and hope.

The tanks in the northern group made rapid progress along the road towards their objectives – the enemy positions at Bülow Farm, Vancouver and Springfield. Among them was D43 Delysia commanded by Lieutenant Enoch, its signed pin-up photograph of Alice Delysia in pride of place beside the driver’s seat.

Private Jason Addy described the journey: ‘When you’re enclosed in a tank and there’s so much racket, you don’t know whether it’s the shells hitting you or what you’re doing. The noise of the engine is tremendous, and we had to stand by with pyrenes [i.e. fire extinguishers] sometimes to get ready to shoot the engine if it got too hot. As we had two 20-gallon tanks of petrol in the rear, and all around the sides there was racks of ammunition, if you had a direct hit in a tank you hadn’t an earthly. Jerry was shelling back and you could feel the blast of the shells as you were looking through the gun slits …’⁵

The sensation of coming under fire in a tank was a disturbing one, but Second Lieutenant Horace Birks found it in some ways reassuring: ‘You started off cock-a-hoop until you started hearing these machine guns rattling on the outside and a sort of glow coming from the plate, you got less confident … One hated hearing these sort of red hot peas hitting on the outside of the tank … but shell bursts quite close, you didn’t feel any effect of them at all. I felt they rather boosted one’s morale … I think one felt fairly well protected … One felt very sorry for the infantry who were out in the open.’⁶

But Second Lieutenant Wilfred Bion of E Battalion found it more disconcerting when he went into action for the first time in the Salient – particularly in the silence before starting his engine:

The shelling was simply one continual roar. Your own guns sounded a sharp crack behind. You could, of course, distinguish nothing. You simply had the deep roar of the guns, which was continuous, and imposed on that was the shrill whistle of the shells passing overhead – just as if it was the wind whistling in a gigantic keyhole. One very big German shell that burst near us could be distinguished above the rest. It sounded like an express train coming through a tunnel – a gradually increasing roar as it came nearer. Then a deafening crash. As the nearer shells burst, the tank used to sway a little and shudder. This was very beastly, as one had previously felt that a tank was the sort of pinnacle of solidity. It seemed as if you were all alone in a huge passage with great doors slamming all around. I can think of no way of describing it.⁷

Along the front to be attacked on 22 August, the position furthest to the left was known to the British as Bülow Farm, presumably in reference to Field Marshal Karl von Bülow, who was widely held responsible for the Germans’ failure to take Paris in 1914.

This position was to be assaulted by 6th Bn Lincolnshire Regiment, supporting two tanks – one of which was D44 Dracula, whose name we last heard when it was abandoned and set ablaze by William Wakley and George Foot at the start of their three-day ordeal at Eaucourt l’Abbaye. The name, though not the tank, had risen from the grave, and its latest incarnation was commanded by Second Lieutenant Charles Symonds, in his first tank action.

The other crew attacking Bülow Farm was that of D41 Devil under Lieutenant Andrew Lawrie, who was just twenty-one years old and had been a medical student at Glasgow University before joining up. He had previously commanded a tank at the Battle of Bullecourt on 3 May 1917, when it was destroyed by five direct hits after being riddled by armour-piercing bullets which injured most of the crew, including himself.⁸ The driver of D41 had also fought at Bullecourt and won the Military Medal for his courage: this was Sergeant Joshua Weeks from Glamorgan in South Wales, who was the same age as Lieutenant Lawrie but had been working down the pits when he was only fifteen.⁹

Two hours after zero, the headquarters of 33rd Infantry Brigade received the message they had been praying for: ‘6.45 A.M. left [company] of Lincs. report to have gained objective including Bulow Fm. & to be consolidating.’ But soon afterwards came a bitter blow: ‘7.30 A.M. Tanks reported held up on Poelcapelle road a direct hit being scored by the artillery on the female tank Devil killing 2/Lt. Lawrie the commander and his Sergeant.’¹⁰

Half-an-hour later a message from the other tank, Dracula, confirmed both the good and bad news: ‘Symonds D44 wires our infantry digging in … Enemy infantry not in sight. Enemy artillery have disabled D41 (Lt. [Lawrie] and Sgt. Weeks killed). Tanks visible abandoned and blocking all round. My tank O.K. Ground bad.’¹¹

Colonel Baker-Carr was determined that his tanks should take some credit for the success, and his report told how ‘the 2 told off for Bulow Farm … got sufficiently near to their objectives to bring fire to bear upon them … The second Tank fired several shots from 6 pdr., at Bulow Farm and the Infantry came up and captured it.’¹²

However, the Lincolnshires told a different story, and a message said that ‘infantry reached objectives long before tanks’.¹³ They reported that the two tanks had been held up on the road, and rather than wait for them, the infantry followed orders and advanced ‘close under the barrage’. As they approached Bülow Farm around fourteen Germans ran out, eight of whom were captured, though half of them were killed by their own artillery and snipers as they made their way back across No Man’s Land.¹⁴ This was also the version accepted by Fifth Army, whose summary of operations said ‘the 11th Division on the left … encountered little resistance, and took Bulow Farm … before tanks arrived.’¹⁵

The infantry supported their account with a more detailed description of what happened to the two tanks:

By zero Dracula, which was leading, had reached the junction of the St. Julien-Poelcappelle and Winnipeg-Langemarck roads, with Devil close behind. They advanced with the infantry, but on getting to within 150 yards of the track leaving Poelcappelle road for Bulow Farm …, found the road blocked by fallen trees and were unable to proceed any further. They were then about level with Vieilles Maisons upon which they opened fire for a short time [this was another blockhouse to the right]. They then came back towards home. During their homeward journey, a direct hit was observed on Devil … Nothing further was seen of the tank Dracula until the evening when it was located on the west side of the Poelcappelle road.¹⁶

Captain Edward Glanville Smith also described what had happened to his section: ‘Lieuts. Lawrie and Symonds reached Bulow Farm, but the former, together with his N.C.O., Sergt. Weeks, was killed almost immediately by an unlucky direct hit which completely disabled the tank.’¹⁷ Although Smith did not mention it, the surviving members of the crew then became locked in a desperate battle for survival.

Meanwhile, despite their early success against Bülow Farm, the Lincolnshires were now coming under severe pressure from their right flank, where the enemy were said to be ‘very active and aggressive’;¹⁸ this was because they were now approaching the main German defensive positions, having moved through the outpost line which was merely designed to disrupt their advance. As they struggled to consolidate, there was no suggestion that they received any support from Dracula, which eventually returned to St Julien. Major Ward expected his tanks to fight with more aggression, and whatever he said to Second Lieutenant Symonds, the next time he went into action, things were to end very differently.

Despite the loss of a tank, the attack on Bülow Farm had at least produced the desired outcome. The key question now was whether the garrison of the Staigerhaus would also cut and run.

The two tank crews that were detailed to attack Vancouver, namely those of D42 Daphne and D43 Delysia, also formed part of the northern group which moved off at zero hour along the blasted road towards Poelcappelle. Their objective lay near the crossing with the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road, a spot now marked by the sombre and imposing memorial to the Canadian troops who had fought here more than a year before, topped by the carved head of a brooding soldier. There is nothing to recall the tanks that came this way, and no trace of the concrete bulk of the Staigerhaus which stood in the fields beyond.

The support of D Battalion was vital to the men of 6th Bn Gloucestershire Regiment, whose orders stated: ‘Tanks will take Vancouver which will be included in our line. If tanks do not arrive no infantry attack will be made on Vancouver.’¹⁹

The enemy did not flee immediately, but an update at 6.30 a.m. sounded promising: ‘6/Gloucs report within 50 yards of Springfield road on right … Tank dealing with Vancouver, which was still strongly held with machine guns. Tank however cannot leave the road.’²⁰ An hour-and-a-half later, a message from Delysia also suggested the attack was still going well against Vancouver, which stood at the apex of a distinctive triangle of roads: ‘A. J. Enoch (D43) wires our infantry in strength on east side of Triangle. Enemy infantry seem to be a minus quantity … My tank going strong on east side of Triangle.’²¹

Therefore, the blow must have been all the greater when divisional headquarters learned just forty minutes later that the attack had broken down: ‘1/6th Glos now reports left company drove Boche from road, but right [company] not up and they were enfiladed and driven out. Tank engaged Vancouver from road but could not silence M.G’s. Left post report battalion on left retiring and right company commander reports 143 [Brigade, i.e. to the right] retiring.’²²

To appreciate what was going on, we will have to leave the attacking tanks and infantry and make the hazardous journey across No Man’s Land towards the squat, battered bulk of the Staigerhaus. Ducking our heads we slip through a low entrance in the massive concrete walls, pass down a short corridor and find ourselves inside one of the cramped chambers of the bunker. At first we can see nothing in the dim interior, filled as it is with smoke from the rifles and machine guns, but after a while we can make out a number of helmeted figures, peering intently through the slits which provide the only source of light. These are the men of 3rd Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment, and they are fighting for their lives. At first they remain frozen like statues, until someone gives a shout and the machine-gunner adjusts his aim and fires a burst, the noise reverberating inside the chamber with a brittle, ear-shattering din. Only when it dies away do we become aware of a constant rumbling in the background, like distant thunder, and we realise this is the ‘drum-fire’ of which the Germans often speak.

Suddenly there is a shattering impact as a shell drops close to the bunker: even through the tiny slit windows the shockwave makes us feel as if we have been punched on the nose and leaves our ears singing, and as we instinctively throw ourselves to the ground, we notice that the floor which had seemed so rock-solid is trembling like jelly. The officer shouts something we cannot understand, and there is some forced laughter from the men who remain crouched at their posts. But now we can think only of what would happen if the concrete roof were to come crashing down, crushing our limbs under its massive blocks, or burying us in the shattered ruins, alone and unable to escape. Now we would do anything to be out in the open, taking our chance against artillery and the elements, where we could at least breathe fresh air and see the sky, and be free from this fearful claustrophobia and choking smoke.

One of the men steps down, fumbling with his rifle, and we catch a glimpse of his face, which is gaunt and lined, with reddened eyes from the fumes and lack of sleep. We take the opportunity to creep up and peer cautiously through the slit window he has vacated. It is good to see the daylight and smell the cool air, but the view is limited and disappointing: a grey blur of horizon, a foreground of flooded shell craters, and no sign of life or movement anywhere. The prospect triggers a surge of panic: perhaps the attackers have already swept past on either side of our fortress, and are preparing even now to storm its walls with hand grenades and phosphorous bombs? Is it time to run, and if so, what are the chances of being able to surrender? Despite everything we have heard about the Battle of Passchendaele, for some reason we had not expected the reality to be so ugly and desperate. Then we recall the words of one British officer who described the German pillboxes ‘all smelling after capture of rotten eggs (phosgene), stale cigars, sweat and putredinous scatter of blood and brains and hair on bomb-pocked floors and walls’.²³ Before we know it, we have ducked back out of the door and are stumbling across the muddy moonscape, panting with effort as we climb the lip of one crater and slide into the next while our feet turn into slippery balls of mud, until the Staigerhaus is swallowed up in the morass behind.

But the tiny garrison under Leutnant Dürr stood their ground, and the Lewis guns of Delysia were powerless to inflict any real damage on them unless the tanks left the road, which would inevitably lead to their ditching and destruction. The commander of 125th Infantry Regiment, Oberst Reinhold Stühmke, summarized the morning’s events:

Through accurate small arms and machine-gun fire using armour-piercing bullets, Leutnant Dürr succeeded in knocking out three tanks that were advancing against the Staigerhaus along the St Julien-Poelcappelle road, under cover of mist and gunsmoke, and were peppering us with cannon and machine-gun fire. The crew from one tank were wounded and it stayed put, another burst into flames, and the third turned tail …

Between 8 and 9 o’clock a second English attack began, after the Staigerhaus – which obviously caused the enemy a lot of problems – had been vigorously bombarded with large calibre shells, but they got nowhere. In front of the Staigerhaus the enemy formed up in ranks to right and left and started a double flanking manoeuvre. Two machine guns, which were brought into position with great courage, provided frontal support against the attempt to seize the flanks of the stoutly defended fortress. Fire from Dürr’s platoon radiated out on three sides. Musketier [i.e. Private] Fahrbach stood up and fired at will; anything that came into his sights was brought down. At 8.35 a.m. Leutnant Dürr reported: ‘Enemy trying to approach from the front, left and right, but forced to retreat every time by redeployment of my magnificent men. Crew of one machine gun already wiped out, packing up and heading back with only one man. Hurrah!’²⁴

The outcome of the tank attack was summarized by the section commander, Captain Smith: ‘Lieuts. Enoch and Sherwood reached the area of their objective, Vancouver, only to find it impossible to cover the ground from the road to the concrete fort, and although they helped the infantry by bombarding it from the road, the place was bullet-proof in front and remained uncaptured.’²⁵

Such was the ferocity of the fire directed at Delysia that shell splinters penetrated the tank’s steel hull.²⁶ No-one suggested they could have done any more, but the infantry’s verdict was brief and resigned: ‘As before, the infantry were to wait until the tanks had captured the positions, but the operation failed, as the tanks could not leave the road to locate them.’²⁷

As the crew of D43 Delysia headed back towards St Julien from their unsuccessful attack on Vancouver, they passed the wreckage of D41 Devil and were confronted by an extraordinary sight. In the words of Private Jason Addy:

Suddenly somebody shouted out: ‘There’s Jagger’, and on the side of the road – Jagger was the corporal that had been in the tank that had been knocked out with Lieutenant [Lawrie]. Unfortunately Lieutenant [Lawrie] had been killed and we could see that, as the tank was tipped off the roadside, we could see his arm sticking out of the gun slit and his hand all twisted. But Jagger was standing there on the roadside waving us to stop. We opened the door and he shouted to us: ‘I’ve got two wounded chaps here, can you take them back with you?’ He had four wounded actually, but we could only carry two so we pulled in these wounded chaps and laid them down on the floor on either side of the driver’s seat and left Jagger to look after the other two.²⁸

The full story of Lance-Corporal Ernest Jagger’s heroism was recounted by another tank commander, Second Lieutenant Frank Mitchell, though he did not name the protagonists:

After managing to get into action at St. Julien, a tank was hit by a shell which crashed through the top, killing the officer and sergeant, and wounding three men severely. The senior man left was a lance-corporal, who immediately tackled the problem of getting the wounded back. Fearlessly he got out and, splashing through the mud, hailed another tank. By this time the enemy machine gunners had spotted him, and when he attempted to carry a wounded comrade to the safety of the second tank he was fired at heavily, but he stuck to his task and saw his patient safely on board. He could easily have climbed in as well, but tank men are taught never to desert their comrades. So back through the slush he trudged, the bullets whistling around his ears. With great difficulty he managed to pull the other two wounded from the battered derelict, and, after attending to their wounds, placed them gently in the driest shell hole he could find.

Now the next part of a tank crew’s duty is to assist the infantry by forming strong points with Lewis guns. The earnest lance-corporal was rather puzzled. His officer and sergeant were dead, and he could hardly form a strong point with two badly wounded men. Still he decided that he would do the next best thing, so he got into touch with the nearest infantry and handed over the Lewis guns to them. On returning, he could find no trace of his two wounded comrades. It was impossible for them to have even crawled away, and yet they had completely disappeared.

With shells falling all round he scrambled from one crater to another, searching in despair. Suddenly, in the spot where he thought he had placed them, he saw something white moving. He crawled nearer, and stared horrified. It was a human hand. The wounded men had actually been buried in the mud by shell fire!

Frantically he tore at the dirt and slime with his hands; but thank God it was not too late, they still breathed faintly. He worked hard to revive them, and then, by a tremendous effort, he succeeded in getting them to a dressing station.

Thus did a lance-corporal do his duty.²⁹

Meanwhile the ordeal was far from over for the wounded men inside D43, as the tank lurched its way over a series of felled tree-trunks, as Private Addy recalled:

Every time we banged down, those poor chaps, you could see in their faces, were in agony. I’ll never forget the look on their faces, and it wasn’t only the tree trunks, for by now the road was a shambles of cartwheels, bodies, and everything you could think of that was in battle. We had to go over a lot of them, you hoped they were dead but you had to go over them just the same as you daren’t get off the road. Sometimes you’d see the wounded lying there, you can see them there alive and you can see by the expressions on the men’s faces that they thought we were going to go over them. Well we do go over them, but we went over them and got them in the centre, and we’d manoeuvre the tank so that the tracks would go on either side. There was plenty of clearance underneath the tank, and they was terrified just the same. We got back to St Julien and lifted the two boys off and laid them behind a wall and went up to look for the stretcher-bearers. When we’d handed them over we camouflaged the two tanks in their parking places and got on the lorries that were waiting to take us back to La Lovie.³⁰

Lance-Corporal Jagger had already won the Military Medal at Bullecourt, for continuing to drive his tank even though partially blinded and then bringing back a severely wounded man under heavy machine-gun fire. For his latest act of bravery, he now also received the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Croix de Guerre.³¹

His dedication earned an even greater reward, and in October 1917 Lance-Corporal Jagger arrived in New York as one of the crew of a tank called Britannia commanded by Captain Richard Haigh, who had previously served as Major Watson’s deputy in No. 11 Company. They took Britannia on a fund-raising and morale-building tour of American cities, and after that Ernest Jagger was posted back to the depot in England, and was never again required to prove his courage on the Western Front.³²

Although the garrison of the Staigerhaus were clearly determined to put up a fight, there was still a chance this could be knocked out of them if the attack succeeded against Springfield, which was the next position to the right (from the British perspective). If the Germans could be driven back here, the men in the Staigerhaus would find their flank exposed and might decide to cut and run. Therefore a lot depended on the final two tanks in the northern group, namely D45 Destroyer and D46 Dragon. They successfully negotiated the long approach, and just over an hour after zero, a pilot swooped overhead and reported ‘Tank in action seen at Springfield at 5.50. Barrage good.’³³

The commander of D46 was Lieutenant David Lewis, a twenty-five year-old bank clerk from Merseyside who had considerable military experience, having enlisted in the Territorials as early as 1909 and served on the Western Front with the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment before being commissioned.³⁴ After transferring to the MGC (Heavy Branch) he was lucky to survive his first attack in the Battle of Arras, when his tank became stuck while crossing a trench and then suffered a direct hit which left it burned out.³⁵

Events now seemed to be repeating themselves, as described by Captain Edward Glanville Smith: ‘Lieut. Lewis … reached Springfield Farm which was captured, but in endeavouring to advance further he was ditched.’³⁶ But this time it was far worse, as the Germans realized Dragon was stuck and moved forward to reoccupy their former positions. Lieutenant Lewis and his crew now found themselves cut off and surrounded by the enemy. The other tank, D45 Destroyer, was powerless to assist and eventually returned to St Julien, its sponson punctured by shellfire.³⁷

This failure had predictable consequences for the infantry from 7th Bn Royal Warwickshire Regiment: ‘The tanks moved forward and were to signal the infantry to rush the concrete blockhouses when the tanks had dealt with them. Owing to the bad state of the ground the tanks got ditched. The delay gave the enemy time to recover and our attack was not able to take its two objectives. A series of posts was established in shell holes near up to the block houses.’³⁸

With the infantry driven back, the last hope of rescue was gone for Lieutenant Lewis and his men, who could only stay locked inside their suffocating steel fortress and pray for a miracle. They sent off a message by carrier pigeon to outline their plight, and at 11.45 a.m. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Howard at 48th Division headquarters took a phone call from Major R.O.C. Ward: ‘[Officer Commanding] No. 12 Coy, Tanks rang up and said that he had received … a pigeon message from a tank at Springfield, who said that he was surrounded by Germans and still holding out in Springfield.’³⁹

Knowing what we do of Major Ward, we can be sure he put his case forcefully, and Lieutenant-Colonel Howard discussed the situation with his commander, Major-General Sir Robert Fanshawe. Three-quarters of an hour later Howard phoned Brigadier-General Gerald Sladen, commander of 143rd Brigade, and ‘told him that the Divisional Commander … wished Genl. Sladen to take steps to rush Springfield and capture it.’⁴⁰

Brigadier-General Sladen has been described as having ‘an incisive manner …, a clear head for an emergency … [and] the soldier’s gift, “an eye for country”.’⁴¹ He needed to draw on all those qualities in framing a response, which was tactful but firm: ‘He did not think that any movement in daylight up to Springfield is now possible owing to German M.Gs, and even if the tank was still holding out in Springfield this would not prevent the Germans from firing out of their emplacements.’ In the end he was ordered to seize any ground that was needed to link up with neighbouring units, but there was no specific instruction about Springfield.⁴²

Another pigeon message arrived that evening bearing a final desperate message from Dragon, though it had been sent at 7 a.m., more than thirteen hours earlier: ‘Am ditched at Springfield. Unditching gear cannot be fixed. Springfield not captured.’⁴³ But Ward and Sladen were powerless to help, and in his subsequent report Colonel Kyngdon admitted they still had no idea what had become of Dragon: ‘No further news of the crew was forthcoming up to mid-day on 25th August.’⁴⁴ The next day, Colonel Baker-Carr was also none the wiser: ‘One tank became ditched and is still there with the crew, as far as is known. The other after remaining sometime returned.’⁴⁵

For Major Watson, the fate of Dragon’s crew remained an unsolved mystery: ‘One gallant tank drew up alongside a “pillbox,” stuck, and fought it out. We never quite knew what happened, but at last the tank caught fire. The crew never returned.’⁴⁶ To find out what became of them, we must travel to Germany, where the archives contain an interrogation report which states triumphantly:

The entire crew of tank 2048 is in our hands. They did not gain their objective, which they did not know, or rather refused to tell us, as they previously became stuck in the mud. They remained lying up all day on 22 August and were continually fired at by the Germans with machine guns and pelted with hand grenades, without suffering any casualties. They sent off a carrier pigeon to their own division, to stop the English artillery destroying the tank to prevent it from falling into our hands. During the night of 22-23 August the Germans threw hand grenades through the slits, so the crew had to abandon the tank and give themselves up.⁴⁷

A more detailed account, tinged with derision, was given by Unteroffizier (i.e. Corporal) Theodor Öchsler of 23rd Reserve Infantry Regiment:

My experiences in the previous three years of war were surpassed by the fighting on 22 August. A hellish bombardment started at 6 a.m. [i.e. 5 a.m. UK time], so we could hardly see what was happening a few metres from our holes through the smoke. However we were all waiting for the expected attack. At last the English launched their assault, to which we gave such a response with our rifle-fire that those who weren’t killed flooded back again. Hardly was that business settled when we saw a tank coming along the road in our rear. Threatened by this, we left our holes and found a suitable position behind the road. All of a sudden, what joy as the tank remained stuck in a hole and could not go any further. I launched myself at the monster, along with Leutnant Schulz and Musketier [i.e. Private] Krügel from the same company. All in vain! Hand grenades, rifles, we tried everything, but there were no gaps. The crew were also firing continuously with the guns that were available. A demolition charge of six hand grenades, which I set off under the [tank] cannon, did not help either. Leutnant Schulz damaged the cannon with his rifle, also to no effect. Hand grenades were thrown up on top, but there were no gaps! Still we could take comfort that the tank could not go any further.

In the evening we moved into our usual holes. Leutnant Schulz, Leutnant Henkel … and I had another go at the tank. With egg grenades, which we put into a small opening, we frightened the crew so much that they immediately began begging for mercy. We shouted: ‘Come out of your box, or we’ll blow it sky-high’, and the little door on the side opened and eight strapping Englishmen were standing there in front of us with their hands up. It was hilarious! After searching them I took them to the battalion, the regiment, and then the 12th Reserve Division. I recounted my experiences of capturing the tank crew to the commander of Fourth Army, His Excellency General Sixt von Armin. He shook me by the hand and congratulated me.⁴⁸

The Germans had captured individual tanks and tankmen in the past, but they had never got their hands on an entire crew. Following their ordeal inside Dragon, Lieutenant Lewis and his men now faced interrogation, and it remained to be seen how much they would reveal about their machine, and about the plans for the battle.

CHAPTER 10

Into the Pillar of Fire