These are the main lessons which were learnt from the tank operations which took place during the battles of the Somme and the Ancre, and the mere fact of having learnt them justifies the employment of tanks during these operations. Further it must be remembered that, whatever tests are carried out under peace conditions, the only true test of efficiency is war, consequently the final test a machine or weapon should get is its first battle, and until this test has been undergone, no guarantee can be given of its real worth, and no certain deductions can be made as to its future improvement. CHAPTER VI THE GROWTH OF THE TANK CORPS ORGANISATION The word “Reorganisation” is a word which will never be forgotten by any member of the Tank Corps Headquarters Staff; it was their one persistent companion for over two years. It dogged their steps through all seasons, over training areas and battlefields in sleuth-hound fashion from the earliest days; and its pace was never stronger or its tongue more noisy than when, on November 11, 1918, it was temporarily shaken off with the armistice. Depressing as this perpetual change often was, reorganisation is, nevertheless, an extremely healthy sign, for it shows that the Tank Corps, a young formation, was not afraid to grow, and that it refused to stand still; and, when all is said and done, should not every organisation be dynamic, should not it move with the times, expand, grow, and absorb difficulties rather than push them aside or ignore them? Whatever, in the eyes of others, the Tank Corps may have been, throughout the Great War it was an intensely virile formation. In this chapter the organisation and reorganisation of the Tank Corps, first known as the “Heavy Section,” and later as the “Heavy Branch” of the Machine Gun Corps, will be dealt with in its entirety; for unless we lay this spectre in a chapter of its own it will never leave us in peace, but will haunt our steps right through this brief history, as was its wont when the incidents now related were taking form in France and England. In June 1916 the Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps was organised in six companies--A, B, C, D, E, and F. Each company consisted of four sections, each of six tanks with one spare tank per company--in all twenty-five machines, thus absorbing the 150 machines ordered.[19] Each section consisted of 3 male and 3 female tanks, subdivided into three sub-sections of 1 male and 1 female each. The crew of a tank was 1 officer and 7 other ranks, the total personnel of a section being 6 officers and 43 other ranks. For every two companies was provided a Quartermaster’s establishment of 1 officer and 4 other ranks, and a workshop of 3 officers and 50 other ranks.