Energy books

But there had not been anything like enough
tanks to secure an annihilating surprise over the enemy as afterward
was attained in the first battle of Cambrai; and the troops who had
been buoyed up with the hope that at last the machine--gun evil was
going to be scotched were disillusioned and dejected when they saw
tanks ditched behind the lines or nowhere in sight when once again
they had to trudge forward under the flail of machine-gun bullets from
earthwork redoubts. It was a failure in generalship to give away our
secret before it could be made effective.
I remember sitting in a mess of the Gordons in the village of
Franvillers along the Albert road, and listening to a long monologue
by a Gordon officer on the future of the tanks. He was a dreamer and
visionary, and his fellow-officers laughed at him.
"A few tanks are no good," he said. "Forty or fifty tanks are no good
on a modern battle-front. We want hundreds of tanks, brought up
secretly, fed with ammunition by tank carriers, bringing up field-guns
and going into action without any preliminary barrage.


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