“Bleedin’ hell, it’s a sight, isn’t it, sir?” Wally Clegg, the small, thin-haired cockney beside Mathers, beamed with a joy the officer couldn’t feel.
“Yes, Clegg. Yes it is,” said Mathers, trying to temper his rising fear.
Reginald Lloyd looked over at the small man with the weary air of one given to correcting those less educated than himself. “It’s not an it, Wally. Tanks are a he or a she.” Reggie had been a butler to minor aristocracy, but had joined up to ‘do his bit,’ a duty he seemed to interpret as trying to instil some manners into his crewmates.
“Well, begging your pardon, Reggie, but I ain’t no vet. How do you tell them apart?”
“Most of us, Wally, paid attention on the course, but for your benefit, both types have front and rear machine guns, but females have smaller sponsons either side with two Hotchkiss machine guns in each, while the males, like this one here, have bigger sponsons, each with a six-pounder gun and a Hotchkiss.”
“By God, the Hun’ll pay now,” said Wally, with evident glee. He was a chipper bloke, Wally. A motor omnibus driver before the war, he had a wife and eight kids. Loved his family, he did, and talked about them at the drop of a hat. It was a pity that they were all dead, having died in a Zeppelin raid on the East End.
Norman Bainbridge smacked his hand on the barrel of the six-pounder. “Aye, the Hun’ll be running scared all right, but only because of your driving!” Norman had been in the music hall, as he was never shy of reminding people, although often so far down the bill you needed spectacles to see his name. Life and soul he was; wherever there was a pianola, there he was leading the singing.
Frank Nichols, an electrical engineer, answered a cryptic advert placed in The Motor Cycle magazine by the War Office and ended up here. He walked around, inspecting the huge caterpillar tracks. “I tell you what; I certainly wouldn’t like to see this bugger coming at me, Alfie.”
Alfie Perkins, his fellow gearsman, was checking out the one-and-a-half-ton hydraulic steering tail, with its iron wheels, at the rear of the tank. He’d joined the Motor Machine Gun Service to be a motorcycle machine gunner, before volunteering for the new Heavy Section. “Me neither. I wouldn’t want to be the Hun when we get over there.”
The fearsome metal beast before him was a Mark I tank. At thirty-two feet long and eight feet high, with its distinctive rhomboid shape, the ironclad land ship weighed twenty-eight tons. This was Britain’s new secret weapon. It was going to help turn the tide of the war and break the deadlock on the Somme. And put the wind up Fritz. More than that, this one, designated I5, was theirs.
The tank had been tuned, the guns cleaned, and Cecil Nesbitt had just put the finishing touches to the name, now painted on the side of the front track horn. Cecil was the youngest crewmember. An orphan and a truculent sod, he’d been signed up by his Platoon Commander, who just wanted shot of him, and he had found a real home. He looked to big Jack Tanner, who nodded with satisfaction. Jack used to be a boxer in a travelling fair until he joined up. His brother was in the Royal Navy and had been killed at the battle of Jutland. He thought joining the ‘Land Navy’ a fitting tribute to him.
They stood back and looked at it with pride. HMLS Ivanhoe.
Outside of the top-secret camp at Elveden, very few people had seen a tank, let alone knew what one was, and that was no surprise. The project was so secret that most men applied without any real idea of what they were applying for. They just knew the pay was slightly better. Three separate perimeters surrounded the camp. No one could get in or out, and it was impossible to get hold of passes for leave. Should they actually manage to see anyone from outside, there was a one hundred pound fine, or six months’ imprisonment, if they disclosed anything about what went on in there. No wonder they were nicknamed the Hush Hush Crowd.
Then there were the months of training, without any hint of what it was they were training for. There was lots of drill and training on Vickers machine guns, but with no reasons why. It was months before they even saw a real tank.
And the tank before them wasn’t just any tank. This was their tank. They were learning to drive it. It wasn’t easy. It took four people just to steer it.
Today was merely battle practice, that was all, but Mathers was nervous.
He had a secret phobia of enclosed spaces, but he would master his fear. He would master this brute machine and make it his.
“Right” he said, as his crew crowded about the sponson hatch. “Top brass will be watching today. I’ve even heard a rumour that the King himself might be coming to watch. So, let’s show them and the rest of I Company what the Ivanhoe can do, eh?”
His crew were in a jocular mood and gave a rowdy cheer.
“That shower in the Igraine reckon they can reach the ‘enemy trenches’ before we can,” continued Mathers. “I’ve got five guineas in the Officer’s Mess that says we’ll beat them.”
It may have been just a training exercise, but now there was money on it, it was serious. This meant war. They entered through the hatches at the rear of the sponsons. At barely four foot high they were a bit of a squeeze, and you had to watch your head, too.
Inside, the compartment was barely five feet high. They couldn’t stand up straight without cracking their heads on the low roof. The Daimler engine almost reached the roof. With a small wooden platform behind it, it sat squarely in the middle of the white-painted compartment, taking up most of the space. Two wooden gangways, less than two feet across and eight feet long, ran down either side.
These opened out into the sponsons, the turrets projecting out either side of the tank, where the six-pounder guns sat, manoeuvred by the sheer strength of the gunner alone. Behind them were the belt-fed Hotchkiss machine guns. To the rear of each sponson was a small entrance hatch.
At the back of the engine was the large starting handle. It took four men to turn it in order to start the engine up.
Either side of that, each caterpillar track had its own gear system, each operated by a gearsman. Privates Alfie Perkins and Frank Nichols manned the independent gears, one for each track.
At the front, in a slightly raised cockpit, Private Wally Clegg, the small bantam cockney, sat in the right-hand driver’s seat, and the tank commander, Lieutenant Mathers, in the left seat, next to him, to operate the steering brakes.
Once the hatches clanged shut, sealing the men in, Mathers felt the panic rising in him. Wally ran the engine up. Frank and Alfie stood by their track gears at the back. The Ivanhoe set off across the training ground.
The tank commander, using steering brakes for each track, could only make slight turns along with the driver, using the wheel that controlled the steering tail. Large swinging manoeuvres took four men.
The engine was too loud for verbal instructions, so Mathers had to get the attention of the gearsmen by banging a wrench on a pipe. He gave a signal with his hand to swing right. He stopped the tank and locked the differential gear. Alfie put his track gear into neutral, stopping the right hand track, while Frank pushed the left track gear into first speed, swinging the tank to the right. The tank had to stop again, while Mathers re-engaged the main gears, and Alfie took the right track out of neutral. It was a long and laborious process.
Obstacles filled the training ground: earthwork ramps, trenches, craters, barbed wire entanglements and deep ditches, all to test the prowess of the tank crews. The noise of the engines filled the training area, as six tanks of 2 Section, I Company set off over the course, the guns blazing away at targets. The Igraine got itself ditched in a crater. The Illustrious threw a track.