We have seen what happened to Deborah and the other tanks of D and E Battalions in the years after the war, and now it is time to examine the varied fortunes of those who fought inside them.
On 17 December 1920, a group of men gathered at one of London’s most opulent venues, the Restaurant Frascati in Oxford Street, to work their way through a menu including oysters, fillets of sole, lamb cutlets, roast pheasant, and ‘souffle glace Frascati’. This was the second reunion dinner for the officers of No. 12 Company, presided over by Major Edward Glanville Smith, who proposed the loyal toast, after which came the silent toast in which each man paid tribute to his comrades, both living and dead. At the end Major Smith passed round his menu to be signed, and the nickname ‘Uriah’ shows that Frank Heap was there, along with James Macintosh and around twenty of their brother officers.1
Major Smith also kept a list of names and addresses on the notepaper of Clarke & Heap, Frank’s family firm, showing he had a hand in its preparation.2 Perhaps there were other reunions after that, but if so Smith did not keep the menus, and after a while the list of names and addresses was no longer updated. The process of drifting apart had begun, familiar to anyone who grew up in the era before social media. As they swayed out of the warm restaurant into the chill of the West End, past the street musicians playing carols in their shabby greatcoats, there was a sense that the suffering and dangers of war had passed, but so had the spirit of comradeship that had made it tolerable, and even at times strangely enjoyable.
Of course, this was not true for everyone, and some men were left so physically or mentally scarred that they never recovered. This was the case with Lieutenant Stanley Cohen of E Battalion, who had returned to the front after being wounded in the attack on 20 November, only to suffer horrific burns to his face and hands, as well as the loss of an eye and a leg, when his tank was blown up in August 1918. After a year of treatment, the pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies performed surgery on him at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, grafting on skin to replace his badly damaged eyelids and nose.3 Fortunately disfigurement and disability did not stop him having a successful career, and in 1921 he began a long association with The Times, initially helping to run their motor insurance scheme before transferring to the pension fund, of which he became secretary until retiring in 1959. The newspaper reported: ‘He was in more ways than one well-equipped to face the problems involved in the administration of welfare schemes for, having been fearfully injured in the war of 1914-18, he was not unacquainted with illness and suffering.’4
But at a deeper level, he was terribly affected. His godson Paul Russell recalls that ‘Stanley’s fiancée deserted him because she was too horrified by his appearance to live with him’, and although he married in 1945, it lasted less than a year. Though kindly, he could be severe, and he was haunted by the conviction that God had inflicted his injuries on him as a punishment for his actions in the war – in particular an episode in which he had to drive his tank over a German gun position. It was a war in which many people had done dreadful things, but he carried this burden of guilt alone until his death in 1972.5
Despite Stanley Cohen’s suffering, at least he survived. Many other lives were shortened by military service, like that of Sergeant Owen Rowe from D Battalion, who died in 1923 at the age of twenty-five. After the war he ran a taxi firm in Bovington with another tank pioneer, Gunner Roy Reiffer, who wrote: ‘His last action in France was at Cambrai where, on the first day of the offensive, he lost his leg while taking shelter outside his tank after it had caught fire. He … was discharged in 1919 … He contracted consumption, and after an illness of six months he died. No doubt the loss of his leg at Cambrai, in 1917, weakened his constitution to such an extent that he would be prone to catch disease quicker than an able-bodied man.’6 Sergeant Rowe was buried in Devon, near the land his parents farmed, his coffin draped in the Union flag.7
However, some men were able to build on their wartime experiences as a basis for future careers. This obviously applied to those who stayed in the army, like Horace Birks, who had started the war as a rifleman and ended up as a second lieutenant, eventually retiring in 1946 as a major-general. During the Second World War he commanded an armoured brigade in the Western Desert, and it was said that ‘his handling of the tanks and his design of the minefields in the rear had a major part in checking Rommel’s successive efforts to capture Tobruk …’8 Having survived two wars, he had a further brush with death in late 1945 when he parachuted from a crippled aircraft over the Austrian Alps, and was found by rescuers twenty-four hours later lying on a mountainside with a broken leg. This ended his military career, but he went on to become secretary of a London medical school, as well as an important source of reminiscences about the early years of the Tank Corps, until his death in 1985 at the age of eighty-seven.9
In a less tangible way, wartime experiences also influenced the later career of Wilfred Bion from E Battalion, who had won the Distinguished Service Order after keeping the enemy at bay with a Lewis gun from the roof of his tank. Bion was a unique combination of action man and intellectual, and after the war he studied first history and then medicine before moving into psychoanalysis, the field in which he established an enduring reputation. Bion developed a theory of group behaviour inspired by what he had witnessed in the army, and put his experiences to good use in the Second World War by developing a more effective approach to the selection of officers.10
Bion could not bring himself to write home to his parents during the First World War, apart from a single letter after Cambrai, which must have been agonizing for them but is of tremendous benefit to us, since he wrote a detailed account for them immediately after the war which was subsequently published as War Memoirs.11 He supplemented this decades later with an autobiography which remained unfinished at his death in 1979,12 and taken together these provide an honest and unguarded perspective on his time in the Tank Corps.
There are several other men to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for recording their wartime experiences. Second Lieutenant James Macintosh returned to South Africa after the war to begin a successful legal career, and in 1921 he published Men and Tanks, which gives the most detailed account of life in No. 12 Company, to which Deborah belonged.13 The book is informative and entertaining, though a straitlaced reviewer in the Tank Corps Journal found some of it far-fetched: ‘To those of you who joined the Corps since the Armistice we would say:– Read this book. You will like it. But you must not swallow quite all of it.’14 One hopes the same could not be said of his later published works, which were sober legal textbooks with titles like Negligence in Delict.15
‘Jim’ Macintosh was a powerful figure, which made it all the more shocking when he collapsed and died from heart disease in 1943 at the age of just forty-five, leaving behind a widow and young son. The South African Law Journal paid tribute to him: ‘Of unassuming and, on first acquaintance, somewhat reserved disposition, Jim Macintosh, with all his profound learning, was of a modest and gentle nature. When one got to know him he proved an amiable and companionable friend … Moderate in all his tastes and habits, he was in every sense of the simple words “a good fellow”.’ The writer referred to his ‘enthusiastic and cheerful presence’,16 and this comes across in Men and Tanks, although he pulls no punches in describing the horrors of war.
The other member of No. 12 Company to record his experiences in print was Major Edward Glanville Smith. His series of articles called ‘The Wanderings of “D” in France’ was published anonymously in the Tank Corps Journal in 1921,17 and its author has only now been identified through careful detective work. So secretive was he that even his own relatives were unaware he had written it. Many of those involved in the war never spoke about their experiences, and Smith does not seem a likely communicator in the way that Macintosh does. In photographs he often appears sombre, and later suffered from depression as a result of his wartime experiences, but he also seems to have had a sense of the absurd, and one photograph in his album shows a group of officers – including Frank Heap – sitting in a field wearing their pyjamas. The rationale for this is lost, but it may relate to a family story about the time Smith went to war and found his mother had packed his pyjamas, which seemed somewhat incongruous in an army hut.18 ‘Glan’ was also clearly an effective officer, and became commander of C (formerly No. 12) Company, as well as presiding over its post-war reunions. He started a family and worked as an export manager in the iron and steel industry, gaining a new lease of life with a further spell of military service in the Second World War, when he became a sergeant in the Home Guard. He died in 1970 at the age of seventy-seven.19
The third, and most celebrated, of D Battalion’s authors was Major William Watson, who was demobilized in early 1919. He had already published an account of his early wartime experiences, called Adventures of a Despatch Rider,20 but a further series of articles in the leading literary magazine Blackwood’s ended abruptly in 191721 when the authorities clamped down on works by serving personnel.22 It therefore came as no surprise when a further series began to appear in Blackwood’s in May 1919, and this was republished in book form as A Company of Tanks – now regarded as a classic of Great War literature.23
During the war Watson had married the strikingly attractive Barbara Wake-Walker, a solicitor’s daughter whose upbringing had been disrupted by her family’s financial difficulties. William’s daughter-in-law described him as having ‘a very high intelligence, courage, and flair and natural charisma. It’s no surprise that Barbara fell in love with him. She had not had much love in her young life, and now she was swept up in it.’24 With three young children to support, Watson embarked on a career as a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour, focusing on issues of industry and education and becoming private secretary to a succession of ministers.25 The contrast with his previous life could not have been more marked: ‘Now I travel daily to St. James’s Park station by the 9.31, and when a “file” returns to me after many days, I sometimes wonder how I ever managed, without writing a single “minute,” to command a Company of Tanks.’26 The war had been his literary inspiration, and although he continued to write, his efforts were now limited to a history book and anthology for children.
The Times commented that ‘with his zeal, marked ability, and personal charm, Mr. Watson would undoubtedly have risen high in the Civil Service,’ but alas, he died in 1932 at the age of just forty-one.27 His daughter-in-law recalled: ‘William died suddenly of pneumonia, no doubt as a result of trench fever in France, leaving Barbara with very little money. She was completely desolated by his loss and ill for a year after, during which period the children … were sent away to school or to friends, until such time as she had … bought a cottage where she was able to gather her family together again.’28 It was a tragic end to a promising life, and to their dreams of happiness together after the hardship of war.
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In 1962, the death of a veteran in a Surrey hospital resulted in another extraordinary record of D Battalion’s war coming to light. Claude Rowberry had joined the Tank Corps after transferring from a cavalry regiment, being promoted to sergeant and winning the Military Medal for bravery in 1918. He was a complex, enigmatic character, and it turned out he also had a secret life: while serving in the Ypres Salient he had been struck by the ‘terrible beauty’ of the blasted landscape, and on his next leave he bought artist’s materials so he could capture the scene in paint. Although Rowberry had no artistic background or training, he turned out to have a remarkable aptitude, and his paintings depicted the tanks and battlefields with a vivid, spontaneous energy.29
But whatever inner compulsion this activity fulfilled, there was no corresponding desire to display his work, which he kept hidden with obsessive secrecy. A journalist later recorded that ‘back in civilian life, he carried on with his art in a locked studio. If his son was ever admitted …, a newspaper or a piece of cloth was thrown over the current picture. When the picture was finished it went into [a] steel trunk without anyone having seen it.’
Rowberry worked as a senior salesman for a textile firm, returning to military service in 1939 when he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and painted his way through another war. Again the results were kept hidden in a way that even his son Donald found baffling: ‘There was something almost feverish about the way he painted; something seemed to be driving him. And everything went into that steel trunk as soon as it was finished.’
When Claude died his widow could not bear to open the trunk, so it was only after her death in 1965 that his vision was finally shared with the world. An exhibition was held, and a sale eventually brought his work to a wider audience. The paintings he did while in D Battalion were bought by the Royal Tank Regiment, and now adorn the walls of their mess at Bovington where his work can at last enjoy the appreciation it deserves.
At this stage we should also pay tribute to another remarkable man who had no such urge to hide his light under a bushel. This was Brigadier-General Christopher Baker-Carr, whose memoirs may not have provided a solution to his own financial problems, but have given us a lively account of his time as commander of 1st Tank Brigade, as well as bringing him hands-down victory in his feud with Major-General Harper.30
As we have noted, Baker-Carr tended to prosper in uniform but not in a civilian suit, and this pattern was repeated when he joined the army for a third time in 1940 at the age of sixty-two. Initially based in Egypt, he was attached to the Spears Mission which attempted to resolve the future of Syria and the Lebanon to the satisfaction of de Gaulle and the local French community, but ended up antagonizing most of the parties instead. Anyone familiar with Baker-Carr’s turbulent financial affairs would be astonished to learn that he was made the mission’s Economic Adviser.31
His eventful life came to an end in 1949, and he would have been delighted that The Times saw him as representing ‘that unconventional type of soldier which disturbs the equanimity of General Staffs but which, if it succeeds in overcoming their opposition, often contributes greatly to the winning of wars’.32 Despite his personal troubles, an even more telling tribute appeared in the same newspaper for many years on the anniversary of his death, from his second wife: ‘In treasured and unfading memory of my beloved husband, and in deep gratitude for the profound love and happiness he gave me.’33
The only member of D Battalion who might have competed with Baker-Carr for raffish glamour was Major Richard Cooper, who had been second-in-command of No. 11 Company and later won the Military Cross twice for bravery. Cooper’s father was a landowner from the East Midlands who made his fortune in the Wild West, having acquired a ranch in Wyoming and become a prominent ‘cattle baron’.34 Even greater wealth flowed when oil was discovered on the land, and ‘Dick’ Cooper inherited a share of this along with his father’s love of hunting, which took him round the world on expeditions to shoot game.
He also bought a coffee plantation in what is now Tanzania, but the real attractions of Africa were the wild animals that lived there, the dazzling people who came to shoot them, and the beautiful women who came with them. In this way ‘Dick’ Cooper became a confederate of Ernest Hemingway and the professional hunter Baron Bror Blixen, who recalled a visit to Kenya in 1929 by the German air ace Ernst Udet. Over dinner, Cooper apparently recorded how their trenches had been strafed by low-flying enemy aircraft in 1917, until he produced his hunting rifle: ‘I … thought I’d try it out on those buggers! Nothing to lose. The first one came straight for us, the pilot clearly visible hunched behind his machine gun. I fired some way in front and to my surprise he plummeted down like a pheasant behind me. The second the same. Hardly believing my luck and cheered on by the men, I quickly reloaded and got a shot off at the third just as he passed over. He also went down.’ According to Blixen, this somewhat marred the evening because the three pilots were from Udet’s unit and he had never found out what became of them, though having heard the story, one might feel he still lacked a credible explanation.35 Cooper also served his country again in the Second World War, working as a military adviser in the Pacific and then at various headquarters after D-Day.36 It would have been a travesty for such an eventful life to end quietly, and sure enough he died after falling from his boat while shooting birds on a lake on his African estate in 1952, having apparently suffered a heart attack. There were claims that he had been drinking, but whether or not this was the case, he had certainly lived life to the full.37
Many other men from D Battalion sought their fortune in Britain’s far-flung colonies after the war. John McNiven, who had been in the same section as Deborah, moved to what is now Suriname where his family owned a sugar plantation, and also died by drowning, having suffered a black-out in his swimming pool on the island of Montserrat, though he reached the age of seventy-eight.38 Major Edgar Marris, the commander of No. 10 Company who was wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Cambrai, settled in Tobago as a planter and died in what is now Guyana in 1944 at the age of fifty-seven.39 James Vose, who had been a mechanical engineer before joining the Tank Corps, moved to Australia as the local representative for a munitions company, but the aircraft he was travelling on went missing on its way from what is now Sri Lanka to Australia in 1946, and his body was never found.40
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The Second World War gave many of D Battalion’s men a fresh taste of active service, but this time they found themselves confronting an enemy who was just as effective, but was now motivated by a merciless ideology.
R.O.C. Ward’s stirring example of courage and sacrifice was carried on to the next generation, and his elder son Robert, who had been a civil servant in Singapore before the war, was killed in 1942 while fighting the Japanese invaders.41 R.O.C.’s other son Patrick – who had already won the Military Cross twice – served in the Royal Tank Regiment and was killed in Normandy two years later.42 His obituary in The Times shows he also inherited his father’s sporting prowess: ‘Major Patrick V. Ward, M.C., fought his battles with as much zest and good humour as he had displayed in the ring against a heavier opponent or in swiping the fastest bowler or stopping a rush in rugger … He is buried at Tourneval, and the French peasants still heap flowers on his grave.’43
Captain Walter Smith, who had taken command of No. 12 Company at Cambrai after R.O.C.’s death, joined up again, but this time in a strange twist he joined an anti-tank unit, and was sent to France at the end of 1939. In an even stranger twist, he met his son Stephen, who was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, on the same troopship, though neither had any idea the other was there. When the Germans swept through Belgium in May 1940, Walter hurried to the town where his son’s field hospital was based but was told it had already left, so he made his way to Dunkirk where he was one of those evacuated on the famous flotilla of little ships, as was Major Patrick Ward.44
Walter’s daughter Joan recalls that as soon as he arrived back, his first words were ‘Has Stephen come home?’, but his son had not made it to the coast and was posted ‘missing, believed killed’. Later she learned what had happened: ‘When their field hospital was evacuated, Stephen and his major … volunteered to remain behind to look after the wounded who were unable to travel. When located by the advancing German army, these unarmed medical staff and their helpless patients were taken outside, summarily shot, then buried in a communal grave … During his short life, his concern was for the good of mankind and he was faithful to the end.’45
Walter dealt with this tragedy as many others did at the time, by simply not referring to it, or his son, again. He served throughout the war but his health was affected by disease contracted in the Middle East, and in 1949 he moved with his family to Australia. As he grew older he found peace through painting, like Claude Rowberry, and died in 1968, never having fully recovered from his wartime illness.46
The Second World War claimed another victim in Fred Dawson from E Battalion, who had survived when his tank Elles II was knocked out near Flesquières, only to fall victim to German gunnery several decades later. Captain Dawson, who ran a food company in Yorkshire, rejoined the army at the age of forty-nine and was posted to the Dover area, where he was killed in 1940 by long-range artillery fire across the English Channel.47
Captain Harold Head, who had been the section commander of Macintosh and Vose at Cambrai, also became a victim, though not in such a literal sense. During the Second World War he served in the RAF and was involved in training the Czech agents who assassinated the notorious Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. The terrible reprisals launched by Hitler, including the destruction of the village of Lidice, caused him so much distress that he was unable to continue, and was transferred to the Bahamas where he trained RAF aircrew to fly American planes. Harold Head died in 1989, the last of the tank commanders who had taken part in the original attack at Flers, and was given a military funeral by the Royal Tank Regiment in recognition of his place in history.48