Life in a Tank (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

"To the uninitiated-as were we in those days when we returned to the Somme, too late to see the tanks make their first dramatic entrance-the name conjures up a picture of an iron monster, breathing fire and exhaling bullets and shells, hurling itself against the enemy, unassailable by man and impervious to the most deadly engines of war; sublime, indeed, in its expression of indomitable power and resolution. This picture was one of the two factors which attracted us toward the Heavy Branch Machine- Gun Corps-as the Tank Corps was known in the first year of its being. On the Somme we had seen a derelict tank, wrecked, despoiled of her guns, and forsaken in No Man's Land. We had swarmed around and over her, wild with curiosity, much as the Lilliputians must have swarmed around the prostrate Gulliver. Our imagination was fired. "