THE TERRIBLE TANKS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 24 May 1917, Page 7

THE TERRIBLE TANKS.

HOW TOMMY REGARDS THEM

A private in the Middlesex Regiment with an unusually vivid imagination and no regard for the truth writes home , to his mother the following wonderful account of the tanks:— "They can do up the prisoners ill bundles like straw Binders, and in addition, have an adaptation of a Goss printing machine wbich enables them to catch the Huns, fold, count, and deliver them in quires, every thirteenth man being thrown out a little further than the others. The tanks can truss refractory prisoners like fowls prepared for cooking, while their equipment renders it, possible for them to charge into a crowd of Huns, and, by shooting out a thousand spikes, like porcupine quills, to carry off an opponent on each. Though 'stuck up,' the prisoners ,are, needless to say, by no means proud of their position. "The cars in question can chew up barbed .wire and turn it into munitions. As they run they clash, their tails and clear away trees, houses, howitzers, and anything else in the vicinity. They turn over on their backs and catch live shells in their caterpillar feet, and can be easily adapted as submarines; indeed most of them cross the channel in this guise. "They loop the loop, travel forwards, sideways, and backwards not only with equal speed, but at the same time. They spin round like a top, but far more quickly. They dig themselves in a hole, bury themselves, scoop out a tunnel, and come out again ten miles further in half an hour. "The tanks can do anything and everything; in fact, if there is anything which can't be done the tanks I can do it.'"