Life in a Tank, Richard Haigh [top 10 novels TXT] 📗

through the hours they were working, not once again did the men drop when they heard the whisper begin. The job was finally done and they filed wearily back.

The attack was timed to come off at dawn. An hour before, while it was still as black as pitch, the tanks moved again for their final starting-point. McKnutt's machine was the first to go.

"Cheero, McKnutt," we said as he clambered in. "Good luck!"

The men followed, some through the top and some through the side. The doors and portholes were closed, and in a moment the exhaust began to puff merrily. The tank crawled forward and soon disappeared into the blackness.

She had about fifteen hundred yards to go, parallel with the Hindenburg Line, and several trenches to cross before coming up with the enemy. We had planned that the tanks would take about three quarters of an hour to reach their starting-point, and that soon after they arrived there, the show would begin.

Since it was still dark and the attack had not commenced, McKnutt and his first driver opened the windows in front of them. They looked out into impenetrable gloom. It was necessary to turn their headlights on, and with this help, they crawled along a little more securely. A signal from the driver, and they got into top gear. She bumped along, over shell-holes and mine-craters at the exhilarating speed of about four miles an hour, and then arrived at the first trench to be crossed. It was about ten feet wide with high banks on each side.

"One up!" signals the driver. The gears-men get into first gear, and the tank tilts back as it goes up one side of the trench. Suddenly she starts tipping over, and the driver takes out his clutch and puts on his brake hard. McKnutt yells out, "Hold tight!" and the tank slides gently down with her nose in the bottom of the trench. The driver lets in his clutch again, the tank digs her nose into the other side and pulls herself up slowly, while her tail dips down into the bottom of the trench. Then comes the great strain as she pulls herself bodily out of the trench until she balances on the far side.

It was now no longer safe to run with lights. They were snapped off. Once more the darkness closed around them, blacker than ever. They could no longer find their route, and McKnutt jumped out, walking ahead with the tank lumbering along behind. Twice he lost his way and they were obliged to wait until he found it again. Then, to his intense relief, the moon shone out with a feeble light. It was just enough to illumine faintly the ground before them and McKnutt reëntered the tank, and started on.

Their route ran close to the sides of an old quarry and they edged along cautiously. McKnutt, with his eyes glued to the front, decided that they must have already passed the end of the quarry. That would mean that they were not far from the spot where they were to wait for the signal to go into action. The moon had again disappeared behind the clouds, but he did not consider it worth while to get out again. The journey would be over in a few minutes.

Suddenly, his heart took a great dive and he seemed to stop breathing. He felt the tank balance ever so slightly. Staring with aching eyes through the portholes, he saw that they were on the edge of the old quarry, with a forty-foot drop down its steep sides before them. The black depth seemed bottomless. The tank was slipping over. When she shot down they would all be killed from concussion alone.

His heart was pounding so that he could hardly speak. But the driver, too, had seen the danger.

"For God's sake, take out your clutch and put your brake on!" McKnutt yelled, his voice almost drowned by the rattle and roar inside the tank. The man kept his head. As the tail of the tank started tipping up, he managed somehow with the brakes to hold her on the edge. For a second or two, she swayed there. She seemed to be unable to decide whether to kill them or not. The slightest crumbling of the earth or the faintest outside movement against the tank would precipitate them over the edge. The brakes would not hold them for long. Then the driver acted. Slowly he put his gears in reverse, keeping the brake on hard until the engine had taken up the strain. Slowly she moved back until her tail bumped on the ground, and she settled down. Neither McKnutt nor his driver spoke. They pushed back their tin hats and wiped their foreheads.

McKnutt glanced back at the men in the rear of the tank. They, of course, had been unable to see out, and had no idea of what they had escaped. Now that the danger was passed, he felt an unreasonable annoyance that none of them would ever know what he and the driver had gone through in those few moments. Then the feeling passed, he signalled, "Neutral left," the gearsman locked his left track, and the tank swung over, passing safely by the perilous spot.

They settled down now to a snail's pace, shutting off their engine, as the Germans could not be more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards away. Running at full speed, the engine would have been heard by them. In a few moments, they arrived at their appointed station. McKnutt glanced at his watch. They had only a few moments to wait. The engine was shut off and they stopped.

The heat inside the tank was oppressive. McKnutt and James opened the top, and crawled out, the men following. They looked around. The first streaks of light were beginning to show in the sky. A heavy silence hung over everything—the silence that always precedes a bombardment. Presumably, only the attacking forces feel this. Even the desultory firing seems to have faded away. All the little ordinary noises have ceased. It is a sickening quiet, so loud in itself that it makes one's heart beat quicker. It is because one is listening so intensely for the guns to break out that all other sounds have lost their significance. One seems to have become all ears—to have no sense of sight or touch or taste or smell. All seem to have become merged in the sense of hearing. The very air itself seems tense with listening. Only the occasional rattle of a machine gun breaks the stillness. Even this passes unnoticed.

Slowly the minute-hand crept round to the half-hour, and the men slipped back into their steel home. Doors were bolted and portholes shut, save for the tiny slits in front of officer and driver, through which they peered. The engine was ready to start. The petrol was on and flooding. They waited quietly. Their heavy breathing was the only sound. The minute-hand reached the half-hour.

With the crash and swish of thousands of shells, the guns smashed the stillness. Instantly, the flash of their explosion lit up the opposite trenches. For a fraction of a second the thought came to McKnutt how wonderful it was that man could produce a sound to which Nature had no equal, either in violence or intensity. But the time was for action and not for reflection.

"Start her up!" yelled out McKnutt.

But the engine would not fire.

"What the devil's the matter?" cried James.

A bit of tinkering with the carburetor, and the engine purred softly. Its noise was drowned in the pandemonium raging around them. James let in the clutch, and the monster moved forward on her errand of destruction.

Although it was not light enough to distinguish forms, the flashes of the shell-fire and the bursts from the shrapnel lit up that part of the Hindenburg Line that lay on the other side of the barrier. One hundred and fifty yards, and the tank was almost on top of the barricade. Bombs were exploding on both sides. McKnutt slammed down the shutters of the portholes in front of him and his driver. "Bullets," he said shortly.

"One came through, I think, sir," James replied. With the portholes shut, there was no chance for bullets to enter now through the little pin-points directly above the slits in the shutters. In order to see through these, it is necessary to place one's eye directly against the cold metal. They are safe, for if a bullet does hit them, it cannot come through, although it may stop up the hole.

Suddenly a dull explosion was heard on the roof of the tank.

"They're bombing us, sir!" cried one of the gunners. McKnutt signalled to him, and he opened fire from his sponson. They plunged along, amid a hail of bullets, while bombs exploded all around them.

McKnutt and James, with that instinctive sense of direction which comes to men who control these machines, felt that they were hovering on the edge of the German trench. Then a sudden flash from the explosion of a huge shell lit up the ground around them, and they saw four or five gray-clad figures, about ten yards away, standing on the parapet hysterically hurling bombs at the machine. They might as well have been throwing pebbles. Scornfully the tank slid over into the wide trench and landed with a crash in the bottom. For a moment she lay there without moving. The Germans thought she was stuck. They came running along thinking to grapple with her. But they never reached her, for at once the guns from both sides opened fire and the Germans disappeared.

The huge machine dragged herself up the steep ten-foot side of the trench. As she neared the top, it seemed as if the engine would not take the final pull. James took out his clutch, put his brake on hard, and raced the engine. Then letting the clutch in with a jerk, the tank pulled herself right on to the point of balance, and tipped slowly over what had been the parapet of the German position.

Now she was in the wire which lay in front of the trench. McKnutt signalled back, "Swing round to the left," parallel to the lay of the line. A moment's pause, and she moved forward relentlessly, crushing everything in her path, and sending out a stream of bullets from every turret to any of the enemy who dared to show themselves above the top of the trench.

At the same time our own troops, who had waited behind the barricade to bomb their way down, from traverse to traverse, rushed over the heap of sandbags, tangled wire, wood, and dead men which barred their way. The moral effect of the tank's success, and the terror which she inspired, cheered our infantry on to greater efforts. The tank crew were, at the time, unaware of the infantry's action, as none of our own men could be seen. The only indication of the fact was the bursting of the bombs which gradually moved from fire bay to fire bay.

The Corporal touched McKnutt on the arm.

"I don't believe our people are keeping up with us, sir," he said. "They seem to have been stopped about thirty yards back."

"All right," McKnutt answered. "We'll turn round."

McKnutt and James opened their portholes to obtain a clearer view. Five yards along to the left, a group of Germans were holding up the advancing British. They had evidently prepared a barricade in case of a possible bombing attack on our part, and this obstacle, together with a fusillade of bombs which met them, prevented our troops from pushing on. McKnutt seized his gun and pushed it through the mounting, but found that he could not swing round far enough to