only as effective fighting machines, but as destroyers of German
morale.

CHAPTER XI

PRISONERS

For weeks after our first introduction to the tanks they were the
chief topic of conversation in our battalion. And, notwithstanding
the fact that we had seen the monsters go into action, had seen
what they did and the effect they had on the Boche, the details of
their building and of their mechanism remained a mystery for a long
time.

For weeks about all we knew about them was what we gathered from
their appearance as they reeled along, camouflaged with browns and
yellows like great toads, and that they were named with quaint
names like "Creme de Menthe" and "Diplodocus."

Eventually I met with a member of the crews who had manned the
tanks at the battle of High Wood, and I obtained from him a
description of some of his sensations. It was a thing we had all
wondered about,--how the men inside felt as they went over.

My tanker was a young fellow not over twenty-five, a machine
gunner, and in a little _estaminet_, over a glass of citron and
soda, he told me of his first battle.

"Before we went in," he said, "I was a little bit uncertain as to
how we were coming out. We had tried the old boats out and had
given them every reasonable test. We knew how much they would stand
in the way of shells on top and in the way of bombs or mines
underneath. Still there was all the difference between rehearsal
and the actual going on the stage.

"When we crawled in through the trapdoor for the first time over,
the shut-up feeling got me. I'd felt it before but not that way. I
got to imagining what would happen if we got stalled somewhere in
the Boche lines, and they built a fire around us. That was natural,
because it's hot inside a tank at the best. You mustn't smoke
either. I hadn't minded that in rehearsal, but in action I was
crazy for a fag.

"We went across, you remember, at eleven, and the sun was shining
bright. We were parboiled before we started, and when we got going
good it was like a Turkish bath. I was stripped to the waist and
was dripping. Besides that, when we begun to give 'em hell, the
place filled with gas, and it was stifling. The old boat pitched a
good deal going into shell holes, and it was all a man could do to
keep his station. I put my nose up to my loop-hole to get air, but
only once. The machine-gun bullets were simply rattling on our
hide. Tock, tock, tock they kept drumming. The first