THE TANK FUN.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15769, 9 December 1916, Page 4

THE TANK FUN.

BY THE MAN INSIDE, A CANTERBURY SOLDIER'S IMPRESSIONS. *-TTS THE FUNNIEST SPORT IN THE WORLD." The man in the Tank has been talk- ' ing to the naturally curious Tommy, and his impressions of our new landships from tho inside are remarkably interesting (says the London "Dispatch" of October 22nd). As related by Sergeant Warburton, of the Canterbury (N.Z.) Mounted Rifles, these impressions no to show that the Man in tho Tank enjoys the fun as much as the troops who follow laughing an ! cheering behind. Warburton came across one of tiTank fellows in Flers village, he t plained yesterday. He had just '-■<■■ out of H.M.L. Damn, to give i: Tank tho name by which it was know; H.M-L. standing for "His Majesty Landship." This Tank had just be; i, cleaning up Flers, and was the particular monster that, striding up and down the High street, Flers, had brought up a cheering mass of the troops. Tho man who was inside tho Tank was laughing as if to split his sides. Ho was laughing so heartily, in fact, that he was almost prevented from talking. Like so many others, Warburton was anxious to have a peep inside H.M.L. Damn, but he was given a decided "No"' It was obviously against orders. The, Tank man was wearing on the shonlder a strap with tho designation '•Motor Machine Gun Section," whicti was very interesting to Warburton, as being a discovery of what the men. inside the Tank were really called. When Warburton enquired what he was laughing at, he was told the Germans, puzzled to know what to make of H.M.L. Damn, and still more puzzled to know what to do with it, had sent out a bombing party of twenty with a load of hand bombs to do their best. The solemn Germans had slily approached the tank, hut intimate acquaintance no more .satisfied them than acquaintance at a distanceTHROUGH THE PEEP-HOLE. "They were frankly in a dilemma," the man from inside the Tank told \varburton, '"and through tho peepholes of th 0 Tank we hugely enjoyed not only the expression of their faces but their feelings as we imagined them to he. It was too good fun to disturb, so wo left them alone. "After a while they came quite close up to the Tank, greatly daring. Then two or three crouched down to sec if they could get underneath; another party of three investigated the sides, and the remainder elected to climb on the top. •'But wherever they climbed «or looked the prospect was disappointing. They did not seem to find any openings for tho use of their bombs. Finally, in great perplexity, they held a, meeting in front of the" tank. It' was a very; unwise spot to choose, because a neat little gun covered them. "One of us who spoke German quite fluently could hear and understand every word they said. What the meeting would have decided wo don't know, for while they were jabbering and gesticulating we turned the gun on,'-'and.' as they say in the newspapers, 'the meeting broke up in disorder.' "It was a great joke, and the laughter inside the tank would have done you good . He went on to tell us of what he called 'Come into my parlour stunt.' H.M.L- Damn ran into a crowd of frightened Huns, who showed a strange aversion to his presence. . "While they stood rooted to the ground in teiror wo opened one of tho little doors of the Tanks, one of our chaps jumped out, got hold of a Hun by the scruff of the neck and dragged) h'im towards tho Tank. The others gripped him by the tunic, and in the twinkling of an eye we had him inside. "To keep him company wo trapped a brother Hun in the same way. He squealed all the time like a stuck pig. "My boy," added tho man in tho Tank, who was a confident youngster of about twenty-two. "it's the finest sport in the world; keeps you bright and cheerful all the time; far better than any pantomime." And then he strode off, still shaking J his sides with laughter. I

HYPNOTISED PROCESSION. 'We have been fighting the Bavarians and the Saxons," explained Warburton'•One day, to my astonishment, I saw a procession of fully 350 Bavarians following behind a Tank as if hypnotised. I couldn't imagine what had come over thom to be acting in this fashion. Either their curiosity had overcome their discretion or they had gone stark, staring, raving mad. "They kept pace with the Tank in wonderful fashion- What a procession ! When they got near enough for us we saw what h a <l happened. They had been hypnotised right enough, and the particular 'fluence cam© from an ✓ugly-ilooking gun. at the rear of iVbe Tank. Had they attempted to bolt the gun would have made mince meat of the lot. "The Saxons are very distressed about us and our Tanks. Just before we advanced to give them hell and other delights two officers and eight men nipped over, saying they had had enough. 'You are too good for us,' they exclaimed. "The Saxon prisoners we took later explained that Saxons ought not to be fighting Saxons. We could have cried as we told them they could easily avoid that painful contingency •by throwing down their arms. They looked scared <>ut of their lives, and yet physically they wcro splendid men. However big' they had learned the Kamarad step all Hght. "Have you heard about the Palm Terrace in Tank Village? So many palms wore shown in Flers when the Tanks went through that we have decided to call it Palm Terrace. In the palming business Fritz is unbeatable"My opinion of the Tanks—and I know it is shared by most of the men who have seen' what they can do—is that without them we would never have got so far as we have done in the last three weeks, and certainly not with the same small percentage of casualties. We are killing six and seven Germans to our one, and it is the Tanks that are helping us to do it."