CAMBRAI DAWN OF THE TANK AGE
British tanks at the Battle of Cambrai could crush barbed wire and roll over trenches and obstacles
“IT WAS THE START OF THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI, PERHAPS THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY OPERATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, AND ONE THAT WOULD ULTIMATELY CHANGE THE CONDUCT OF WARFARE FOREVER”
At 6am on 20 November 1917 the men of 84 Infanterie-Regiment were slumbering in their dugouts, secure in the knowledge that they occupied the most formidable German positions on the entire Western Front. It was a sector so quiet that troops called it the ‘silent front’ or the ‘Flanders sanatorium’, where divisions were sent to recover from the slaughter in the Ypres Salient.
In such a peaceful place it should have been impossible for the enemy to conceal any preparations for an attack. Yet at 6.20am the calm was shattered by a stupendous artillery bombardment that erupted without warning on the German lines. Leutnant Adolf Saucke raced to the entrance of his dugout. “In the dawn, the trench was like a sea of fire from the ceaseless detonation of falling shells,” he later described. When the barrage moved forward, they rushed out to man the trenches but could see nothing: “In front of us, No-Man’s Land was cloaked in grey morning mist. Behind us lay a greyish-yellow wall of fog, from which emerged dazzling flashes of flame from the constantly bursting shells.”
Ahead in No-Man’s Land lay a network of advanced outposts designed to detect and disrupt an attack. Peering into the mist from one of these positions, Leutnant Adolf Mestwarb heard an astonished cry: “Sir, something square is coming!” As it lumbered forward, Mestwarb recognised the angular form of a British tank but with an enormous object perched on its roof. “We immediately opened fire, but unfortunately without making the slightest impression on the brute. It moved further forward, firing as it went, then veered to the left to make room for those behind, which were now appearing one after another from behind the wood in front of us.”
As they were driven back by fire from the tanks and from low-flying aircraft, Leutnant Mestwarb had no idea that the same story was being repeated along six miles of the German front. A total of 378 fighting tanks, supported by
