Stories from the trenches : $b humorous and lively doings of our boys "over there" — John Shaqi
Stories from the trenches : $b humorous and lively doings of our boys "over there"Case, Carleton B. (Carleton Britton)
History
Stories from the trenches : $b humorous and lively doings of our boys "over there"
Case, Carleton B. (Carleton Britton)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Anecdotes
From the far end of a long, smooth field came two other twin beasts
of this ilk, crawling forward in a hurry as though hungry for human
blood. In front of their track, at the other end of the field, were
two breastworks built of sand-bags covering some timbered dugouts and
protected from sudden attack by two belts of barbed wire. The two tanks
came along like hippopotamuses on a spree, one of them waiting for
the other when he lagged a little behind. They hesitated for a moment
before the breastworks as if disliking the effort of climbing them,
then heaved themselves up, thrust out their snouts, got their hind
quarters on the move, and waddled to the top. Under their vast weight
the sand-bags flattened out, the timber beneath slipped and cracked,
and the whole structure began to collapse, and the twins plunged down
on the other side and advanced to attack the barbed wire.
Another tank now came into action from the far end of the field,
bearing the legend on its breast of “_Faugh-a-ballagh_,” which, I am
told, is Irish for “get out of the way.” It was the Derby winner of the
tanks’ fleet. From its steel flanks guns waggled to and fro, and no
dragon of old renown looked half so menacing as this. St. George would
have had no chance against it. But King George, whose servant it was,
was not afraid, and with the Prince of Wales he went through the steel
trap-door into the body of the beast. For some time we lost sight of
the King and Prince, but after a while they came out laughing, having
traveled around the field for ten minutes in the queerest car on earth.
The great thrill of the day came later. Through the woods of a high
bank on the left came a tank, looking rather worse for wear, as though
battered in battle.
It came forward through the undergrowth and made for the edge of
the bank, where there was a machine gun emplacement in a bomb-proof
shelter, whose steep bank was almost perpendicular. It seemed
impossible that any old tank should entertain a notion of taking that
jump, but this tank came steadily on until its snout was well over
the bank and steadily on again with that extraordinary method of
progression in which the whole body of the beast moves from the nose
end upward until it seems to have a giraffe’s neck and very little
else. That very little else was sitting on the top of the emplacement
while the forward part of the tank was poised in space regarding the
setting sun. However, without any hesitation, the whole mass moved on,
lurched out, and nose-dived.
Good Lord! it was then that the thrill came. The tank plunged down like
a chunk of cliff as it fell, went sideways and lost its balance, and,
as near as anything could be, almost turned turtle. It righted itself
with a great jerk at the nick of time just before it took the earth
below and shaved by a hair’s breadth an ammunition dump at the bottom
of the drop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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