WITH THE TANKS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 19 December 1936, Page 3

WITH THE TANKS

THE INSIDE STORY (By Air Mail —From Our Own Co.’. respondent) LONDON, 19th December. Another volume of War memoirs has arrived, this time telling the inside story of the first tanks. Though a few of these queer military reptilians were used, or misused, in .the Third Ypres battle, it was at Cambrai they scored their first success of note. The author of this latest War book, Captain D. E. Hickey, gives us a vivid picture of his tank comrades, some veterans of worid-wide adventfiring, others boys fresh from the cadet battalion. He tells us, too, how a tank looked after the Germans had peppered it—like hammered burnished pewter and perforated like a pepperpot. A bullet striking the outside caused a blue flash inside the tank. When a machine-gun bullet penetrated, it ricocheted to and fro until its force was spent.', A R.E. friend of mine, who spent weeks of conscientious artistry oh making' a duthmy tank to draw fire at Cambrai, found after the battle that the Germans had not wast- j ed a single shot on it. . It nearly | broke his .heart., But he admitted the tribute to German field glasses.