JOY RIDE IN A TANK

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 19, 17 October 1918, Page 6

JOY RIDE IN A TANK

A NEW ZEALANDER'S EXPERIENCE

THE TRIP DESCRIBED

Should any young New Zealanders aspire to serve in the Tank Corps they will ho able to gain a very good impression of the experience of travelling in a super-mobile tank over a broken battlefield from a well-known resident of tho Dominion, who tried it while in England. Tho experience of tanktravel is described as follows:—

"I wound up a tour through Scotland and the Midland Counties at a tank works near Birmingham, and was one of a party that 'enjoyed' a tank ride. The trip was a great eye-opener, but nothing perhaps was more wonderful iii its way than the tank factory and the tanks themselves. I was 'fairly flabbergasted at the rate of construction, but even more so at the performances of the completed article. They climb up and down practically anything on which they can feel a grip at all; swing round easily and swiftly in their own length; balance like a gyroscope, and occasionally vary the proceedings by doing a stunt backwards. They "are so perfectly . under control that the driver can pull them-up sharp on the edge of a cliff at a 'traction of a second's notice, or he can allow the front half of his machine to dangle over the edge of the cliff, and still crawl hack to safety. They could climb up and down The Dominion (Plimmer's) steps with tho greatest ease, or even take a running divo into, the gully between the southern end of Kelbuni Park and Salamanca Eoad and climb up again on to the road 'without turning a hair.' ' They go through a wire fence moro easily than you would go through a fence of sewing' cotton. - !

.'"The latest tanks are-a great improvement on earlier patterns, and they carry on with such an absence of fuss or noise ' that you might pass by a field in which they are operating without noticing them. I was lured into taking a joy ride down a steep face into and out of some trenches and over a very rough piece of country in one of the'brutes. It is"an experience hard to forget. The nearest approach to it that I can think of is to be ■inside a traction engine or steamroller let loose at. the top of the steepest street in Wellington, after the street had been grid-ironed with 10ft. deep ditches. One of the beauties of the tanks from our point of new is that when they come to a slope or a deep trench they can be let loose to.travel as fast as their weight impels them. You can imagine the r.ush and clatter with which they would go tearing down.on the Huns below. The tank •is so shaped that whatever it hits at the bottom, it simply climbs up, and, in most cases, all over it. _ But it is no joy ride for the inexperienced. We got the lives shaken out of us, awl some of the passengers on the trip got some hard knocks. One passenger was knocked nut by concussion at the base of the spine, and was in bed for three days. . Another •passenger was also knocked about in the same way. My impression is that the' fellows driving the tank thought they would give us an idea of the rough side of their job. .They succeeded!"'