<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</SPAN><br/> <span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">Tanks</span></span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">There</span> is no race-horse that can keep up
with an automobile, no deer that can out-run
a locomotive. A bicyclist can soon tire out
the hardiest of hounds. Why? Because animals
run on legs, while machines run on wheels.</p>
<p>As wheels are so much more speedy than legs,
it seems odd that we do not find this form of
locomotion in nature. There are many animals
that owe their very existence to the fact that
they can run fast. Why hasn't nature put
them on wheels so that when their enemy appears
they can roll away, sedately, instead of
having to jerk their legs frantically back and
forth at the rate of a hundred strokes a minute?</p>
<p>But one thing we must not overlook. Our
wheeled machines must have a special road
prepared for them, either a macadam highway
or a steel track. They are absolutely helpless<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</SPAN></span>
when they are obliged to travel over rough
country. No wheeled vehicle can run through
fields broken by ditches and swampy spots, or
over ground obstructed with boulders and tree-stumps.</p>
<p>But it is not always possible or practicable
to build a road for the machines to travel upon,
and it is necessary to have some sort of self-propelled
vehicle that can travel over all kinds
of ground.</p>
<p>Some time ago a British inventor developed
a machine with large wheels on which were
mounted the equivalent of feet. As the wheels
revolved, these feet would be planted firmly on
the ground, one after the other, and the machine
would proceed step by step. It could travel
over comparatively rough ground, and could
actually walk up a flight of stairs. We have a
very curious walking-machine in this country.
It is a big dredge provided with two broad
feet and a "swivel chair." The machine
makes progress by alternately planting its feet
on the ground, lifting itself up, chair and all,
pushing itself forward, and sitting down again.</p>
<p>Although many other types of walking-machines
have been patented, none of them has<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</SPAN></span>
amounted to very much. Clearly, nature hopelessly
outclasses us in this form of propulsion.</p>
<p>Years ago it occured to one ingenious man
that if wheeled machines must have tracks or
roads for their wheels to run on, they might be
allowed to lay their own tracks. And so he
arranged his track in the form of an endless
chain of plates that ran around the wheels of
his machine. The wheels merely rolled on this
chain, and as they progressed, new links of the
track were laid down before them and the links
they had passed over were picked up behind
them. A number of inventors worked on this
idea, but one man in particular, Benjamin Holt,
of Peoria, Illinois, brought the invention to a
high state of perfection. He arranged a series
of wheels along the chain track, each carrying
a share of the load of the machine, and each
mounted on springs so that it would yield to
any unevenness of the ground, just as a caterpillar
conforms itself to the hills and dales of
the surface it creeps over. In fact, the machine
was called a "caterpillar" tractor because
of its crawling locomotion.</p>
<p>But it was no worm of a machine. In power
it was a very elephant. It could haul loads<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</SPAN></span>
that would tax the strength of scores of horses.
Stumps and boulders were no obstacles in its
path. Even ditches could not bar its progress.
The machine would waddle down one bank
and up the other without the slightest difficulty.
It was easily steered; in fact, it could
turn around in its own length by traveling forward
on one of its chains, or traction-belts,
and backward on the other. The machine was
particularly adapted to travel on soft or plowed
ground, because the broad traction-belts gave
it a very wide bearing and spread its weight
over a large surface. It was set to work on
large farms, hauling gangs of plows and cultivators.
Little did Mr. Holt think, as he
watched his powerful mechanical elephants at
work on the vast Western wheat-fields, that
they, or rather their offspring, would some day
play a leading role in a war that would rack the
whole world.</p>
<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
<p>But we are getting ahead of our story. To
start at the very beginning, we must go back
to the time when the first savage warrior used
a plank of wood to protect himself from the
rocks hurled by his enemy. This was the start<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</SPAN></span>
of the never-ending competition between arms
and armor. As the weapons of offense developed
from stone to spear, to arrow, to arquebus,
the wooden plank developed into a shield
of brass and then of steel; and then, since a
separate shield became too bothersome to
carry, it was converted into armor that the
warrior could wear and so have both hands free
for battle. For every improvement in arms
there was a corresponding improvement in
armor.</p>
<p>After gunpowder was invented, the idea of
armor for men began to wane, because no armor
could be built strong enough to ward off the
rifle-bullet and at the same time light enough
for a man to wear. The struggle between arms
and armor was then confined to the big guns
and the steel protection of forts and war-ships.</p>
<p>But not so long ago the machine-gun was invented,
and this introduced a new phase of warfare.
Not more than one rifle-bullet in a thousand
finds its mark on the battle-field. The
Boers in the battle of Colenso established a
record with one hit in six hundred shots. In
the excitement of battle men are too nervous to
take careful aim and they are apt to fire either<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</SPAN></span>
too high or too low, so that the mortality is
not nearly so great as some would expect. But
with the machine-gun there is not this waste of
ammunition, because it fires a stream of
bullets, the effect of which can readily be determined
by the man who operates the volley. The
difference between the machine-gun fire and
rifle fire is something like the difference between
hitting a tin can with a stone or with a stream of
water. It is no easy matter to score a hit with
the stone; but any one can train a garden hose
on the can, because he can see where the water is
striking and move his hose accordingly until he
covers the desired spot. In the same way,
with the machine-gun, it is much easier to train
the stream of bullets upon the mark, and, having
once found the mark, to hold the aim. That is
one reason why the destruction of a machine-gun
is so tremendous; another, of course, being
that it will discharge so many more shots per
minute than the common rifle.</p>
<div id="ip_112" class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_112.jpg" width-obs="496" height-obs="348" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">British Tank Climbing out of a Trench at Cambrai</div>
</div>
<p>In the Russo-Japanese War, the Russians
played havoc with the attacking Japanese at
Port Arthur by using carefully concealed machine-guns,
and the German military attachés
were quick to note the value of the machine-<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</SPAN></span>gun.
Secretely they manufactured large numbers
of machine-guns and established a special
branch of service to handle the guns, and they
developed the science of using them with telling
effect. And so, when the recent great war suddenly
broke out, they surprised the world with
the countless number of machine-guns they possessed
and the efficient use to which they put
them. Thousands of British soldiers in the
early days of the war fell victims to these death-dealing
machines. Two or three men with a
machine-gun could defy several companies of
soldiers, especially when the attackers had to
cut their way through barbed wire entanglements.
It was clearly evident that something
must be done to defend the men against the
machine-gun; for to charge against it meant,
simply, wholesale slaughter.</p>
<div class="center"><div class="container">
<div id="ip_113" class="figleft" style="width: 349px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_113.jpg" width-obs="349" height-obs="248" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">Even Trees were no Barrier to the British Tank</div>
</div>
<div id="ip_113b" class="figright" style="width: 356px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_113b.jpg" width-obs="356" height-obs="249" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">Press Illustrating Service</div>
<div class="caption0">The German Tank was very heavy and cumbersome</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>At first the only means of combating the machine-guns
seemed to be to destroy them with
shell-fire; but they were carefully concealed,
and it was difficult to search them out. Only
by long-continued bombardment was it possible
to destroy them and tear away the barbed wire
sufficiently to permit of a charge. Before an
enemy position was stormed it was subjected to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</SPAN></span>
the fire of thousands of guns of all calibers for
hours and even days.</p>
<p>But this resulted in notifying the enemy that
a charge was ere long to be attempted at a
certain place, and he could assemble his reserves
for a counter-attack. Furthermore, the Germans
learned to conceal their machine-guns in
dugouts twenty or thirty feet underground,
where they were safe from the fire of the big
guns, and then, when the fire let up, the weapons
would be dragged up to the surface in time to
mow down the approaching infantry.</p>
<p>It was very clear that something would have
to be done to combat the machine-gun. If the
necessary armor was too heavy for the men
to carry, it must carry itself. Armored automobiles
were of no service at all, because they
could not possibly travel over the shell-pitted
ground of No Man's Land. The Russians
tried a big steel shield mounted on wheels,
which a squad of soldiers would push ahead
of them, but their plan failed because the wheels
would get stuck in shell-holes. A one-man
shield on wheels was tried by the British. Under
its shelter a man could steal up to the barbed
wire and cut it and even crawl up to a machine-<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</SPAN></span>gun
emplacement and destroy it with a hand-grenade.
But this did not prove very successful,
either, because the wheels did not take
kindly to the rough ground of the battle-field.</p>
<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
<p>And here is where we come back to Mr.
Holt's mechanical elephants. Just before the
great war broke out, Belgium—poor unsuspecting
Belgium—was holding an agricultural
exhibit. An American tractor was on exhibition.
It was the one developed by Mr.
Holt, and its remarkable performances gained
for it a reputation that spread far and
wide. Colonel E. D. Swinton of the British
Army heard of the peculiar machine, and immediately
realized the advantages of an armored
tractor for battle over torn ground.
But in the first few months of the war that
ensued, this idea was forgotten, until the effectiveness
of the machine-gun and the necessity
for overcoming it recalled the matter
to his mind. At his suggestion a caterpillar
tractor was procured, and the military engineers
set themselves to the task of designing an
armored body to ride on the caterpillar-tractor
belts. Of course the machine had to be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</SPAN></span>
entirely re-designed. The tractor was built for
hauling loads, and not to climb out of deep shell-holes;
but by running the traction-belts over
the entire body of the car, and running the
forward part of the tractor up at a sharp angle
the engineers overcame that difficulty.</p>
<p>In war, absolute secrecy is essential to the
success of any invention, and the British engineers
were determined to let no inkling of
the new armored automobiles reach the enemy.
Different parts of the machines were made in
different factories, so that no one would have
an idea of what the whole would look like. At
first the new machine was known as a "land-cruiser"
or "land-ship"; but it was feared that
this very name would give a clue to spies, and
so any descriptive name was forbidden. Many
of the parts consisted of rolled steel plates
which might readily be used in building up vessels
to hold water or gasolene; and to give the
impression that such vessels were being constructed
the name "tank" was adopted. The
necessity of guarding even the name of the machines
was shown later, when rumors leaked
out that the tanks were being built to carry
water over the desert regions of Mesopotamia<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</SPAN></span>
and Egypt. Another curious rumor was that
the machines were snow-plows for use in Russia.
To give some semblance of truth to this
story, the parts were carefully labeled, "For
Petrograd."</p>
<p>Probably never was a military secret so well
guarded as this one, and when, on September
15, 1916, the waddling steel tractors loomed up
out of the morning mists, the German fighters
were taken completely by surprise. Two days
before, their airmen had noticed some peculiar
machines which they supposed were armored
automobiles. They had no idea, however, that
such formidable monsters were about to descend
upon them.</p>
<p>The tanks proceeded leisurely over the shell-torn
regions of No Man's Land, wallowing
down into shell-holes and clambering up out of
them with perfect ease. They straddled the
trenches and paused to pour down them streams
of machine-gun bullets. Wire entanglements
were nothing to them; under their weight steel
wire snapped like thread. The big brutes
marched up and down the lines of wire, treading
them down into the ground and clearing the way
for the infantry. Even trees were no barrier<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</SPAN></span>
to these tanks. Of course they did not attack
large ones, but the smallish trees were simply
broken down before their onslaughts. As for
concrete emplacements for machine-guns, the
tanks merely rode over them and crushed them.
Those who attempted to defend themselves in
the ruins of buildings found that the tanks
could plow right through walls and bring them
down in a shower of bricks and stone. There
was no stopping these monsters, and the Germans
fled in consternation before them.</p>
<p>There were two sizes of tanks. The larger
ones aimed to destroy the machine-gun emplacements,
and they were fitted up with guns for firing
a shell. The smaller tanks, armed with
machine-guns, devoted themselves to fighting
the infantry. British soldiers following in the
wake of the bullet-proof tank were protected
from the shots of the enemy and were ready to
attack him with bayonets when the time was
ripe. But the tanks also furnished an indirect
protection for the troops. It was not necessary
for the men to conceal themselves behind the
big tractors. Naturally, every Hun who stood
his ground and fought, directed all his fire upon
the tanks, leaving the British infantry free to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</SPAN></span>
charge virtually unmolested. The success of
the tank was most pronounced.</p>
<p>In the meantime the French had been informed
of the plans of their allies, and they set
to work on a different design of tractor. It
was not until six months later that their machines
saw service. The French design differed
from the British mainly in having the
tractor belt confined to the wheels instead of
running over the entire body of the tank. It
was more blunt than the British and was provided
at the forward end with a steel cutting-edge,
which adapted it to break its way through
wire entanglements. At each end there are two
upward-turning skids which helped the tank
to lift itself out of a hole. The larger machines
carried a regular 75-millimeter (3-inch) field-gun,
which is a very formidable weapon. They
carried a crew of one officer and seven men.</p>
<p>Life in a tank is far from pleasant. The heat
and the noise of machinery and guns are terrific.
Naturally, ventilation is poor and the fumes and
gases that accumulate are most annoying, to
say the least. Sometimes the men were overcome
by them. But war is war, and such discomforts
had to be endured.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</SPAN></span>
But the tank possessed one serious defect
which the Germans were not slow to discover.
Its armor was proof against machine-gun fire,
but it could not ward off the shells of field-guns,
and it was such a slow traveler that the
enemy did not find it a very difficult task to
hit it with a rapid-fire gun if the gunner could
see his target. And so the Germans ordered up
their guns to the front lines, where they could
score direct hits. Only light guns were used
for this purpose, especially those whose rifling
was worn down by long service, because
long range was not necessary for tank
fighting.</p>
<div class="center"><div class="container">
<div id="ip_120" class="figleft" style="width: 344px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_120.jpg" width-obs="344" height-obs="249" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">The Speedy British "Whippet" Tank that can travel at a
speed of twelve miles per hour</div>
</div>
<div id="ip_120b" class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_120b.jpg" width-obs="350" height-obs="180" class="p4" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">(C) Underwood & Underwood</div>
<div class="caption0">The French High-Speed "Baby" Tank</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>When the Germans began their final great
drive, it was rumored that they had built some
monster tanks that were far more formidable
than anything the Allies had produced. Unlike
the British, they used the tanks not to lead
the army but to follow and destroy small nests
of French and British that were left behind.
When the French finally did capture one of the
German tanks, which had fallen into a quarry,
it proved to be a poor imitation. It was an
ugly-looking affair, very heavy and cumbersome.
Owing to the scarcity of materials for<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</SPAN></span>
producing high-grade armor, it had to make
up in thickness of plating what it lacked in
quality of steel. The tank was intended to
carry a crew of eighteen men and it fairly
bristled with guns, but it could not manœuver
as well as the British tank; for when some
weeks later a fleet of German tanks encountered
a fleet of heavy British tanks, the Hun machines
were completely routed.</p>
<div id="ip_121" class="figcenter" style="width: 547px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i_121.jpg" width-obs="547" height-obs="174" alt="" /><br/>
<div class="captionl">Courtesy of "Automotive Industries"</div>
<div class="captionh0">Section through our Mark VIII Tank showing the layout of the interior with the locations
of the most important parts in the fighting compartment in the engine room</div>
</div>
<p>It was then that the British sprang another
surprise upon the Germans. After the big
fellows had done their work, a lot of baby tanks
appeared on the scene and chased the German
infantry. These little tanks could travel at a
speed of twelve miles an hour, which is about
as fast as an ordinary man can run. "Whippets,"
the British called them, because they
were like the speedy little dogs of that name.
They carried but two men, one to guide the tank
and the other to operate the machine-gun. The
French, too, built a light "mosquito" tank,
which was even smaller than the British tank,
and fully as fast. It was with these machines,
which could dart about quickly on the battle-field
and dodge the shell of the field-guns, and
which were immune to the fire of the machine-<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</SPAN></span>gun,
that the Allies were able to make progress
against the Germans.</p>
<p>When the Germans retired, they left behind
them nests of machine-guns to cover the withdrawal
of their armies. These gunners were
ordered to fight to the very end. They looked
for no mercy and expected no help. Had it
not been for the light tanks, it would have been
well nigh impossible to overcome these determined
bodies of men without frightful losses.</p>
<p>Since America invented the machine-gun and
also barbed wire, and since America furnished
the inspiration for the tank with which to trample
down the wire entanglements and stamp out
the machine-guns, naturally people expected
our army to come out with something better
than anything produced by our allies. We did
turn out a number of heavy machines patterned
after the original British tank, with armor that
could stand up against heavy fire, and we also
produced a small and very speedy tank similar
to the French "baby" tank, but before we could
put these into service the war ended. The
tanks we did use so effectively at St.-Mihiel
and in the Argonne Forest were supplied by
the French.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</SPAN></span></p>
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