Today In History - WW I German Soldiers Attacked By Monsters

It may sound incredible and the Germans who saw them advancing probably did not believe their own eyes but indeed monsters - of a sort - were advancing on their positions in Battle of Flers-Courcelette an offensive in the Battle of the Somme. The Germans had been expecting a British infantry advance but indeed had never imagined what was coming at them. As a German war correspondent reported it:

"Two mysterious monsters slowly approached us, over the cratered landscape. The monsters approached slowly limping, swaying, swinging but they kept moving towards us. No obstacles could stop them, a supernatural force seemed to drive them forwards. Our machine gun fire and our head weapons ricocheted off them. So they had no trouble wiping out the crews of the advanced shell
holes." 1

What the Germans were seeing, on that Sept. 15, 1915, were not monsters out of a science fiction novel. Yet, for all practical purposes, they could have been because the Germans though valiant were as helpless against them as they would have been against an invasion of alien spaceships. You see the things that they saw advancing on them, the things that wiped them out, were a new type of war machine the likes of which the world had not seen before and that thing came in good numbers. It was a division of troops supported by tanks, about 21 of them that actually made it into warfare that day. What they saw was probably a lot like the one pictured, a British Mark 1 male tank (they also had a female model with less firepower). Even though faced with monsters the Germans showed great bravery in the face of such beasts. As reported by a British war correspondent:

“They were very courageous. Despite the tank’s machine gun fires, they attempted in desperate rage to assault the wandering tank fort and to kill its crew, They hauled each other up in the air, climbed on the roof, searched for hatches and openings and fired into the slits with pistols." 2

Despite the valiant attempts of the Germans the tanks helped achieve a feat that had been virtually unheard of during the trench warfare of the War To End All Wars. The British forces advanced about 3,500 yards in one day - this during a war where victory was claimed after advances of a mere few feet.

There were drawbacks to the tank. For one thing they were notoriously unreliable. many broke down, others got mired in mud and so on. Yet the British and french believed in them and hurried to improve and develop more efficient models. The Germans believed that artillery would master tanks - a mistake they paid for with defeat. How things changed by WWII when the German Army through use of air forces, artillery and tanks followed by huge infantry advances heralded a new form of warfare known as the Blitzkrieg.

Today we have the M1 Abrams Tank here in the USA. Just compare the specs for it to those of the British Mark 1 and you will realize that we have come a long way since the first use of tanks in warfare on this day in history in 1915. I imagine though if I was in an infantry unit and was armed with only a rifle, even in today's world of warfare, and saw an antiquated Mark 1 advancing on me all guns firing away, I probably would not be as valiant as were those German soldiers way back then.

All the best,
Glenn B

footnotes:
1. & 2. http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?what=thmanu&lang=en&manu_id=1580&tag=15&monat=9&weekd=&year=2009&weekdnum=&dayisset=1&lang=en