"Tanks 1914-1918"
(Hodder Stoughton.)
Lieut.-Col, Sir Albert Stern, a member of a well-known firn of London Bankers, relates ly a well-illustrated—volume of 300 pages the part flayed during the Great War in the production of the famous Tanks. The development of the idea of an armoured car which could travel across rough country, trenches, and shell-shattered areas is traced from its inception, Mr. Winston Oburchill was keenly interested in the idea, and caused the experiments to be carried out from which in course of time the fighting tank was developed. Orders for the first 100 tanks were placed with the manufacturers February, 1916. In Merch, Col. Swinton was appointed to the command of the cree which was to man the tanks. In June, Col. Swinton succeeded in obtaining an area in Norfolk, part of Lord Iveagh's estate at Thetford. A large number of men of the Royal Engineers were sent there, and dug an exact copy of part of the line in France, Two battalions of
ectalled to guird every entrance the Royal Defence Corps to this arena here inthe middle of June two companies were encamped and began to train with six tanks each. In August the first tanks crossed to France, The tanks were entrained at night and taken by nail to Avonmouth. They were then shipped to Havre, entrained to a village near Abbeville, and from there sent up to a point 15 miles behind the line. Moving tanks in those days was a very difficult business. The sponsons (which carried the guns) each weigh-
and put on separate trucks, and in ed a ctw, and had to be unboltes that journey from Thetford to the front, Tanks and sponsons were loaded or unloaded five times.
As a matter of fact the crews who handled these tanks became so expert that the average time of entrainment of tanks or sponsons was less than four minutes per tank, The autho" then proceeds to detail the successes of the tanks in their first battles on the Somme in 1916 resulting in orders for the "rush" production of somewhat jumproved types. To cafe with the enormous und arduous business of the production of this new arm, new department of the Ministry
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.