US troops digging in pause to watch a Whippet tank.
Whippet Tank in actionTroops digging in - FranceLogo: The Chicago Daily News War PostalsReverse:The Chicago Daily NewsG. J. KavanaughWar Postal Card Department
"The Central Workshops set to work in early June [1918] to prepare sledges for supply haulage, bridges upon which the Whippets could cross wide obstacles, and 'Cribs' for the heavy Tanks. These 'Cribs' were big hexagonal oaken crates, reinforced with steel, which were an improved and lighter version of the fascines which were improvised for the Battle of Cambrai. Training grounds and workshops hummed with the preparations, and when, in the last days of July, the call came, it was, as we shall see, found possible to launch 400 Tanks at little over a week's notice."
The British Tank Corps first saw action on September 15, 1916 in the Battle of the Somme advancing in too-small numbers on wet, shell-torn ground. They were first effectively used — well-coordinated with infantry, fighting on dry ground, against an un-prepared enemy — in the Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917. The Mark IV and Mark V tanks were slow, but could move in pace with the foot-soldier. The Whippet was a lighter, faster tank. In the paragraph preceding today's excerpt our author wrote, 'All through May, Mark V. machines were arriving in France at the rate of about sixty a week. . . . All Tank Units were to be ready for action—re-armed, re-equipped and re-trained—by August 1.' The fascines used at Cambrai were great wire-bound bundles of logs that could be dumped into a trench to allow tanks to cross.
The Tank Corps by Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis, page 177, publisher: The Offices of "Country Life," Ltd. and George Newnes, Ltd., publication date: 1919
1918-07-29, 1918, July, Battle of Cambrai, Whippet, Mark V, fascines, crib
