TANKS COME HOME

Evening Star, Issue 21890, 29 November 1934, Page 17

TANKS COME HOME

THEIR MOVE AT NIGHT BIS TESTS IN BRITAIN 1 Late at night I was standing under the leafy arches of the tree-vaulted “ road to nowhere ” that runs northwest from Salisbury to intersect the Stonehenge road, when a earful of late homing birds appeared, writes Captain B. Liddle Hart, in the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ They were steering a slightly erratic course, and emitting sounds of merriment that suggested they had dined more well than wisely. A voice near me in the dark bitingly remarked: “ It’ll serve ’em right, and sober them if they run into a medium tdnk.” The prospect seemed to be probable, for up the road down which they disappeared I happened to know that nearly 100 tanks were due to be approaching. i And as many more were converging from the road that here runs up from the Avon Valley. Soon they appeared—two long strings of them—awesome shapes, rumbling ominously, that would have affrighted any medieval knight-errant out for a gentle evening dragon-slaying. What happened to the revellers I do not know, but to any thoughtful observer of the eerie sceue the question must have come: “What would have been the moral effect on an opposing force of infantry?” German soldiers have told us, what few British know from experience, how unnerving it was to be attacked by tanks. But these war-time attacks came from sluggish three miles per hour machines in daylight. The modern tank is not only much faster—and speed' multiplies moral effect —but it can move and strike in the darkness. The scene I have described was the penultimate stage of the ninth exercise of the Tank Brigade. This test, which began days before, formed the longest range movement that the Tank Brigade has tried, and the greater part of it was covered in the dark. Yet the average speed was only one mile an hour less than in daylight. The general idea of the scheme was: the continuation of that which governs the exercise. The Tank Brigade was supposed to have been blazing a Jong trail of havoc in the areas of the hostile army. But at last the time had come—and was perhaps overdue—for it to make its own “ get-away.” Its far-spread menace had drawn an .important'part of ’the enemy’s force away from the front, especially the tank battalion and anti-tank unit. ' A FEINT. In order to withdraw to his own side of the line, before he was hemmed in, the tank brigade commander thought to throw the enemy off the scent, and open a way home for himself by Cirencester, and then round by the north hank. The chief obstacle was that the enemy tank battalion, numbering six tanks, wore reported to have been detrained in this area. To draw them away and 'then cut across behind, the tank brigade again moved south-west yesterday morning—ns if to threaten Yeovi] or Wimhorne. Leaving its harbour near Tilsliead just before 9 a.m. it ran openly across the plain and along the roads beyond in two columns. A little short of Wincanton the bulk of the brigade turned sharply S.K., passed Shaftesbury and eventually went into harbour in Cranborne Chase early in the evening. Meantime the 2nd Battalion Royal Tank Corps, which continued its westward path as far as

Castle Carey before doubling back, now dispersed into six small packets, to rejoin the brigade. Thus it was hoped the enemy would still be persuaded that both Yeovil and Wunborne were ominously threatened and expect news of attacks oil these places. Far otherwise was the idea of the Tank Brigade commander. The enemy aircraft had followed his course all day, but no watchful eyes in the air saw the brigade emerge in the morning. By daylight it was in a fresh harbour thirty miles to the N.E., after a long, deceptive circuit. TWO COLUMNS. Moving from Cranborne Chase soon after midnight, the brigade travelled in two columns along the curving path that first went S.E., then veered N.E. and finally N. The outer column passed by Ringwood and Cadnam and north to Hornsey. The march was made in a slight, mist, which deepened as dawn approached. But this did not appreciably check the tanks, which had avoided any chance of their last hip into harbour being observed by hostile aircraft. By 7 a.m. they were hidden in the woods near Lopcombc Corner, on the Salisbury-Andover road. To this point the medium tanks had covered, on an average 100 miles, and the light tanks 130—within the twenty-four hours. All day they lay in hiding, while hostile aircraft scoured the * West' of England in search of them for many hours, with no clue to their whereabouts—since they had vanished into Cranborne Chase the evening before. It is worth remark that, although the presence of “ tanks ” had been reported there, the report did not suffice to locate

the Tank Brigade as a whole. For aught the enemy command knew the tanks seen there were no more than a fragment purposely detached for their deception. Darkness had again fallen when, shortly after 9 p.m., the brigade moved out in two columns, one going north and one west, to reunite in a fresh harbour just north of Salisbury. By 11 p.m. it was entering harbour, and at midnight the process was complete. At 1.30 a.m. it broke harbour, and made a fresh night march to Tilshead, where it was all in by 3 a.m.—having added another twenty to thirty miles to the distance covered in the fortytwo hours’ exercise.