Deborah and the War of the Tanks
Page 52
4. The I.O.B. [i.e. Imperial Ottoman Bank] Gazette, January 1918. Koe does not say which tank he was in, but this can be worked from the evidence in his letters.
5. Statement regarding circumstances which led to capture in Marris’s service record, held by Ministry of Defence.
6. Hülsemann, p. 253.
7. Maurice, p. 264. His service record in NA (WO 363) indicates he was in No. 10 Company, from which only two tanks were knocked out at this stage in the battle. The circumstances seem to fit what we know of D6 Devil-May-Care, commanded by Lieutenant Sydney Glasscock, who was killed.
8. Anon., ‘The Wanderings of “D” in France’. R. A. Jones was actually a second lieutenant (see service record in NA, WO 339/131917).
9. Letter to sister of Lance-Corporal Monks in possession of Richard Cousse. Thanks to him for permission to quote from this letter.
10. Macintosh, Men and Tanks, p. 131. Macintosh does not identify the tank or its commander, but his description of the location and circumstances makes it clear this was D41 Devil II.
11. See ibid, pp. 123–4. He names the section commander as ‘Captain Alphen, M.C.’ but the D Bn Battlegraph gives his true identity.
12. Letter in possession of family.
13. Maurice, p. 261. This does not identify Lance-Corporal Tolson’s tank, but he refers to ‘Mr Butler my Crew Commander at Passendale & Cambri [sic]’ in a letter in Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LIDDELL 9/28/63 1916-1963). Second Lieutenant Gerald Butler was commander of D32 Dop Doctor II.
14. See Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 21.
15. Maurice, p. 102.
16. Ibid., p. 264. The connection with Field is shown in Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 179: ‘F. and one of his sergeants had shown the utmost gallantry in collecting the wounded under fire and rallying the men.’
17. Macintosh, Men and Tanks, pp. 125–6.
18. Strutz, p. 46.
19. Narrative of Operations in War Diary of 7th Bn Black Watch in NA (WO 95/2879).
Chapter 29: Into the Hurricane (pp. 190–197)
1. Details from War Diary of 5th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/111) and E Bn Battlegraph (in Tank Museum). These do not give a crew number for Ernest, but this tank had the number E24 in previous engagements in September 1917.
2. Bion, The Long Week-end, p. 161.
3. Peel and Macdonald, p. 54. Macdonald wrote the second part of the book, which is quoted here.
4. War Diary of 6th Bn Seaforth Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2867).
5. Zindler, Auf Biegen und Brechen, pp. 236–8. In this translation a number of very short paragraphs have been run together, and some sentences now end with full stops where the original uses dots (…); some exclamation marks have also been omitted.
6. De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour Vol. 3, p. 11. The section commander is not named but can be identified from the Battlegraph.
7. Of the tanks named in the report, the E Bn Battlegraph shows that E17 Edinburgh (Second Lieutenant Miles Atkinson killed), Egypt (Second Lieutenant George Testi killed), E18 Emperor II, E10 Endurance (Second Lieutenant Ronald Barringer wounded), WC Euryalus, and WC Exquisite (Second Lieutenant Thomas Wilson killed) all suffered direct hits. Only Eileen survived the battle and returned to the rallying-point, though it was destroyed in further fighting two days later. The total number of dead and wounded ‘other ranks’ is known, but not which tanks they were in.
8. War History of 5th Tank Bn, in War Diary of 5th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/111).
9. This combines two accounts of the incident: firstly a letter from Major A. H. Gatehouse to the Royal Tank Corps Journal in October 1935, and secondly an anonymous account (also apparently by Gatehouse) in the History of Cambrai compiled by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart in Tank Museum (E2006.381). Both name the officer as Second Lieutenant Atkinson, but this is inconsistent with the account of Atkinson’s death given by his section commander.
10. Bion, The Long Week-end.
11. Ibid., pp. 162–3. In the original, ‘breech’ is spelled ‘breach’.
12. Ibid., p. 164.
13. Ibid., pp. 165–6.
14. Daily Chronicle, 11 December 1917. The same report appears in Gibbs, Open Warfare, p. 101.
15. Dahlmann, Reserve-Infanterie-Rgt. Nr. 27 im Weltkriege, pp. 376–7.
16. Ibid., p. 382.
17. Falls, The Life of a Regiment Volume IV, pp. 168–9.
18. ‘Cambrai: A Tank Commander’s Impression’, Tank Corps Journal (November 1922). See previous notes on this source.
19. Unpublished autobiography in possession of family.
20. Letter in the possession of Mme Bacquet, Cambrai. As section commander, it seems likely that Homfray would have been in his only male tank – Ewen, commanded by Cohen. However, the events he describes seem more similar to the account of Ethel II, commanded by Quainton.
21. Bion, War Memoirs, p. 52.
22. Commentary in Bion, War Memoirs, p. 204. Bion gives a completely different account and says Quainton’s tank broke down just after the Grand Ravine and was destroyed by a direct hit, though no-one was injured. This version is inconsistent with the E Bn Battlegraph which shows that Ethel II progressed to the final objective and suffered a direct hit, but returned to the rallying-point.
23. Falls, The Life of a Regiment Volume IV, p. 169.
24. War Diary of 6th Bn Gordon Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2868/1).
25. Mackenzie, p. 132.
26. Hickey, p. 107.
Chapter 30: Green Fields Beyond (pp. 198–207)
1. Interview in IWM Sound Archive (7031).
2. Biographical notes from his son Ian MacNiven. Note that this anecdote is not specifically linked to Cambrai. John changed the spelling of his surname to MacNiven during the war.
3. See Bion, The Long Week-end, p. 162.
4. Family recollections.
5. Comment by Corporal Dave Drew of the Staffordshire Regiment, from ‘The Most Telling Hours of Young Lives’, a pooled dispatch by Colin Wills of The Sunday Mirror sent from Kuwait on 2 March 1991 during the First Gulf War.
6. Hülsemann, p.109, though this does not give his full name; also in Dahlmann, p. 373.
7. Ibid.
8. Hülsemann, p. 61.
9. Ibid., p. 118.
10. Ibid., p. 92.
11. War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/ 110).
12. Wedel, pp. 168–9.
13. Dahlmann, p. 375.
14. Wedel, pp. 167–8.
15. Dahlmann, pp. 374–5.
16. Hülsemann, p. 125.
17. Photographs in possession of Jean Luc Caudron and Philippe Gorczynski.
18. Maurice, p. 102.
19. History of 4th Tank Bn in War Diary in NA (WO 95/110).
20. Anon., ‘The Wanderings of “D” in France’. Frank Heap was then a second lieutenant.
21. Belfast Evening Telegraph, 15 December 1917.
22. Watson, A Company of Tanks, pp. 176–7.
23. Ibid., p. 178.
24. This obviously ignores the Royal Flying Corps, which was above the battlefield.
25. Interview in IWM Sound Archives (4126). Hastie formerly commanded D17 Dinnaken, the tank that famously ‘walked up the High Street of Flers’ in the first attack on 15 September 1916.
26. Anglesey, p. 108.
27. Willie Pennie, An Account of my Sojourn in France & Germany during the Great War 1917-1919 in IWM (11255). He writes ‘a 100 yds’. I have added a dash after ‘camp’.
28. War Diary of IV Corps HQ in NA (WO 95/716).
29. Ibid.
30. War Diary of 1st Cavalry Division HQ in NA (WO 95/1097).
31. Interview in Liddle Collection (590).
32. War Diary of 4th Dragoon Guards in NA (WO 95/1112).
33. ‘L.I.’, ‘Cambrai, 1917 – The Impressions of an Infantryman’.
34. War Diary of 2nd Cavalry Brigade HQ in NA (WO 95/1110). The commander was Brigadier-General Desmond Beale-Browne.
35. Intervie
w in Liddle Collection (590).
36. 1st Cavalry Division, private report in Diary of Sir Douglas Haig – copy in NA (WO 256/24). A note identifies the author as Major-General Sir Henry Macandrew, commander of 5th Cavalry Division.
37. Lieut.-Colonel Lionel James (ed.), The History of King Edward’s Horse (The King’s Oversea Dominions Regiment), London, 1921, p. 236.
38. Dahlmann, p. 375.
39. Macintosh, ‘The Tanks at Cambrai’, pp. 191–2.
40. Ibid., p. 192.
41. Recollection from Will Heap.
42. Orders dated 6 November 1917 in War Diary of 152nd Infantry Brigade HQ in NA (WO 95/2863).
43. Recollection from Will Heap.
44. Anon., ‘The Wanderings of “D” in France’.
45. Maurice, p. 102.
Chapter 31: Like a Boar at Bay (pp. 208–216)
1. Report on Operations in War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
2. D Bn Battlegraph in NA (MFQ 1/1384).
3. History of 4th Tank Bn in War Diary in NA (WO 95/110).
4. Report on Operations in War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
5. Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 179.
6. War Diary of 6th Bn Seaforth Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2867).
7. Hülsemann, p. 118, from an account by Leutnant Bielenberg.
8. Report on Operations in War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
9. Ibid.
10. War Diary of 1st Brigade Tank Corps HQ in NA (WO 95/98).
11. War Diary of 6th Bn Seaforth Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2867).
12. Peel and Macdonald, p. 55.
13. Report on Operations in War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
14. Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 179.
15. Harper, pp. 72–3.
16. Official History – Cambrai, p. 82.
17. Falls, The Life of a Regiment Volume IV, p. 169.
18. Hülsemann, p. 249.
19. War Diary of IV Corps HQ in NA (WO 95/716).
20. War Diary of 18th Infantry Brigade HQ in NA (WO 95/1615).
21. War Diary of 152nd Infantry Brigade HQ in NA (WO 95/2863).
22. War Diary of 6th Bn Gordon Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2868/1).
23. Falls, The Life of a Regiment Volume IV, p. 169.
24. Hülsemann, pp. 249–50.
25. Birks, ‘Cambrai – The Attack on Flésquières Ridge [sic]’.
26. Compiled from interviews in IWM Sound Archive (refs. 870 and 4024).
27. From account in the History of Cambrai compiled by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart in Tank Museum (E2006.381). The account is anonymous, but clearly by Birks.
28. Birks, ‘Cambrai – The Attack on Flésquières Ridge [sic]’.
29. Interview in IWM Sound Archive (4024). The timing is taken from his account in Hobart’s History of Cambrai, where he identifies them as the Ambala Cavalry Brigade, though this must be incorrect.
30. From account in the History of Cambrai compiled by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart in Tank Museum (E2006.381).
31. Watson, A Company of Tanks, pp. 180–1.
32. 51st Division Report on the Operations S.W. of Cambrai in NA (WO 158/390).
33. Official History – Cambrai, p. 88.
34. Ibid., p. 90.
35. Hülsemann, p. 53. This is from a report by Oberleutnant Nissen, adjutant of 3rd Battalion.
36. Hauptmann Dahlmann, Gefechtskalendar des Res.-Inf. Regts. 27, 1914/1918, Berlin, 1923, p. 33.
37. Hülsemann, p. 91.
38. Ibid., p. 92.
39. Coghlan, ‘Cambrai Day’.
40. Unpublished memoirs of Colonel Norman Dillon, then in B Battalion, Tank Corps, in National Army Museum (1987-03-9).
41. Fuller, Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier, p. 188.
42. Hülsemann, p. 122. The officer who met Major Krebs was Leutnant Schulz, trench mortar officer of No. 3 Battalion.
43. Ibid.
Chapter 32: A Bitter Evening (pp. 217–222)
1. 51st Division Report on the Operations S.W. of Cambrai in NA (WO 158/390).
2. War Diary of 6th Bn Gordon Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2868/1).
3. Mackenzie, p. 133.
4. Peel and Macdonald, p. 66.
5. Nottingham Evening Post, 27 November 1917. The dispatch was sent on the previous day. A slightly revised version appeared in Philip Gibbs, Open Warfare, pp. 56–7.
6. Hickey, pp. 109–10.
7. From Scottish Soldier, an unpublished memoir by Major-General D. N. Wimberley in IWM (PP/MCR/182), p. 90. From the date and location given it is clear this refers to Deborah.
8. See Captain Bruce’s service record in NA (WO 374/10263) and Rev. Grant’s service record in NA (WO 374/28544). Despite the critical comments, in both cases an official investigation concluded: ‘… the [Army] Council considers that no blame attaches to him in the matter.’
9. Rorie, chapter on Cambrai by Captain R. T. Bruce, p. 170.
10. Macintosh, Men and Tanks, pp 128–9. He names the section commander as ‘Captain Alphen, M.C.’ but the D Bn Battlegraph gives his true identity.
11. Macintosh, Men and Tanks, pp. 129–30.
12. Ibid., pp. 131–2.
13. Photograph and note by Lieutenant Alexander Christie of Royal Garrison Artillery. Thanks to his nephew Jim Christie for this information.
14. The Times, 21 November 1917.
15. The Times, 22 November 1917.
16. The Times, 24 November 1917.
17. Service record in NA (WO 339/12569).
18. Carmarthen Journal, 7 December 1917.
19. Letter in possession of Charles Foot.
20. Ibid.
21. Cambridge Chronicle, 12 December 1917. His surname is misspelled ‘Chiverton’ in the article.
22. Card in possession of family. Some changes have been made to punctuation and capitalisation.
23. Belfast Evening Telegraph, 15 December 1917.
24. Nottinghamshire Guardian, 22 December 1917.
Chapter 33: The Chance Was Gone (pp. 223–231)
1. War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110) and D Bn Battlegraph in NA (MFQ 1/1384).
2. Handwritten note by Lieutenant Gerald Edwards in Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 166.
3. Macintosh, Men and Tanks, pp. 137–8.
4. War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110) and D Bn Battlegraph in NA (MFQ 1/1384).
5. War Diary of 5th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/111).
6. Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 190.
7. Diary of Sir Douglas Haig – copy in NA (WO 256/24).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Brigadier-General John Charteris, At G.H.Q., London, 1931, p. 270.
11. Captain Geoffrey Dugdale, “Langemarck” and “Cambrai” – A War Narrative 1914–1918, Shrewsbury, 1932, p. 109.
12. C. H. Dudley Ward, History of the Welsh Guards, London, 1920, p. 172.
13. Sir Douglas Haig’s Dispatch on the Battle of Cambrai in The Times, 5 March 1918.
14. Bion, The Long Week-end, p. 166. Bion says he was unaware of the story before reading about it in Haig’s Dispatch.
15. Hotblack, ‘A Cambrai Myth?’.
16. Arthur Conan Doyle, The British Campaign in France and Flanders 1917, London, 1919, p. 245.
17. Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 398.
18. Report on Operations in War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
19. Report on Operations, 20th: November, 1917 dated 28 November 1917 in War Diary of 5th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/111).
20. Summary of Operations in War Diary of 1st Brigade Tank Corps HQ in NA (WO 95/98).
21. Ibid.
22. Report on Operations in War Diary of 7th Bn Gordon Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2882/1).
23. Narrative of Events in War Diary 6th Black Watch in NA (WO 95/2876).
24. Appendices in War Diary of 8th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in NA (WO 95/2865/2).
/> 25. Account of Operations Before Cambrai in War Diary of 152nd Infantry Brigade HQ in NA (WO 95/2863).
26. Bion, War Memoirs, p. 65.
27. War Diary of 5th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/111).
28. Watson, A Company of Tanks pp. 195–6.
29. Official History – Cambrai, pp. 158–9.
30. Watson, A Company of Tanks, pp. 196–7.
31. History of 4th Tank Bn in War Diary in NA (WO 95/110).
32. Anon., ‘The Wanderings of “D” in France’.
33. Bion, War Memoirs, p. 58.
34. War Diary of 4th Bn Tank Corps in NA (WO 95/110).
35. Service record in NA (WO 339/23425). This gives the date as February 1917, which must be a mistake for February 1918.
36. Watson, A Company of Tanks, p. 221.
37. Interview in IWM Sound Archive (870).
38. 1st Cavalry Division, private report in Diary of Sir Douglas Haig – copy in NA (WO 256/24).
39. The Times, 24 July 1919.
40. 1st Cavalry Division, private report in Diary of Sir Douglas Haig – copy in NA (WO 256/24).
41. Anglesey, p. 158.
42. Diary, November-December 1917 by C. E. W. Bean – entry for 9 December 1917 (pp. 80–4) in Australian War Memorial (AWM38 3DRL606/94/1). The original contains a number of abbreviations and some shorthand characters, which have been expanded here.
Chapter 34: Sticking to their Guns (pp. 234–240)
1. From ‘The Meaning of Cambrai’, anonymous article in Tank Corps Journal (November 1922).
2. Der Englische Angriff bei Cambrai am 20.11.1917, report by Heeresgruppe Kronprinz Rupprecht dated 4 December 1917, in Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (M 33/2 Bü 73). The underlining is in the original.
3. Photographs in possession of Jean Luc Caudron and Philippe Gorczynski.
4. Rockstroh and Zindler, p. 97.
5. Wedel, pp. 297–307.
6. Zindler, Auf Biegen und Brechen, p. 244.
7. Ibid., pp. 246–7.
8. International Committee of the Red Cross records.
9. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge records.
10. Third Army Intelligence Summary dated 25 November 1917 in NA (WO 157/158).
11. Auszug aus der Verlustliste des Feld-Artillerie-Regiments Nr. 108 in Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau (PH12/II/109).
12. Letter from Kameradschaftliche Vereinigung ehem. Angehöriger des F.A.R. 108 to Generalleutnant Freiherr von Watter dated 22 May 1932. A photocopy of this letter is in the papers of the late Gerhardt Remmel in the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne. The original is apparently in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, but it has not been possible to locate this under the reference given. The final sentence is from Romans 13:7.