MAROONED TANK.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 November 1917, Page 4

MAROONED TANK.

ALL-DAY FIGHT WITH FORT. (From W. Beach Thom,as.) ■ France, Aug 29. How the tanks won a battle to their own cheek north of St Julien is now old history, though the experiences of their crews, some among the most dramatic in the war, are as 3'et untold. One of the best of these I heard yesterday within the body of one of the very tanks that had gone through the battle. The hide ot the machine bore many of the marks of battle. It was dinted and man}’’ nuts were shaved off, but it had been mended on the field and went as well as ever, as I can testify after travelling back in it from the old German trenches across rough country and modest bridges. It was a comfortable journey, varied only by one little affair with a pollard willow that caused a momentary retreat, a brief excitement produced by a gust of machine-gun fire against a low German airman, and the upsetting of a young officer by the sudden tightening of a steel rope during an interval spent in salving a sister tank.

All the tanks, of course, were not so lucky as this. One lies moribund in front of our latest line of advance, and the story 7 of its crew s escape is characteristic of the new warfare. Goliath, which will serve for its name, serpentined forward unattended to attack a German strong place. His approach and the rattle of his shell sent some of the enemy running, while a few, more daring than the rest, vainly attacked him with bomb and rifle. At this crisis some wound "or some accident produced paralysis, and Goliath was reduced to the condition of a motionless fort of steel instead of concrete, and the crew held their steel fort till dusk in fighting the rival and bigger defence in concrete. IN THE ENEMY I/INES. They were marooned in the enemy’s territory 7, but, taking out. their Lewis guns and destroying the interior of the machine, they slipped out and started on a pilgrimage home. It was dusk, and directions were hard to keep. The rendezvous in a certain shell-hole was lost by some of the first scouts sent out to prospect, and so it came about that many of the crew were soon separated. Neither force thereabouts has a regular trench line, but the Germans were in possession, thickly enough scattered round and about in shell-holes. A ’young officer, scouting alone, found himself suddenly 7 in the midst of one of their little garrisons, but in spite of the surprise he had time to nip a bomb out of his pocket, release the pin, jerk the pomp into the enemy’s midst, and bolt into the darkness again. He had now quite lost direction, and at dawn was still well within the enemy’s lines. There was nothing for it but to lie doggo in a shell hole till darkness came again. Next night luck was with him. He avoided all Germans, was shot at only once by one of our patrols, and after much trouble persuaded his friends that he was hot one of the enemy. Others had- other experiences, but every man of this crew cauie safely home. BACK THROUGH YPRES. I came back from the journey in tlie tank through Ypres, in order to revisit that city of sacrifice. Imagination could not paint a more poignant emblem of ruin. The bleached and shattered ribs of the cathedral and the Cloth Hall shining against a very blue sky have conserved by some miracle of individuality the live btfauty of old which the artists gaveisthem, and one rose window in tlie cathedral keeps intact its delicate tracery to assert the wickedness of destruction else complete. A little later a thundercloud settled over the back of the city while the sun was still bright in the west, and Ypres was invested with the halo of as vivid a rainbow as ever I saw.