[59]“During the withdrawal the condition of the villagers was pitiful. Women and children and old men crazed with fright with liveliest memories of the conduct of the Germans in the area occupied by them, were to be seen streaming westwards from their homes, pushing their meagre possessions before them in hand-carts and alternately invoking the aid of their Saints and calling down their wrath upon the hated Boche.” Nor was the retreat only tragic to those of the Tank Corps who had to witness the supreme misery of these processions of the Cross. There was a lesser unhappiness for the tacticians of the Tank Corps in the contemplation of the appalling waste of Tank machines and men. The Tanks had been far too scattered ever to pull their weight. [60]“To hit with them as they were distributed on March 21 was like hitting out with an open hand instead of with a clenched fist. “When the German blow fell there was no time to hit and simultaneously to close the fingers.” Out of 370 Tanks which were fit to fight, only 180 saw any action, a great many machines running out of supplies or being incapacitated by some temporary mechanical trouble, and so lost without having fired a shot. The fault lay in the fact that the infantry Commanders under whom they were acting did not fully understand the functions and limitations of the Tank, or realise that as the final loss of a good many Mark IV. machines in such a retreat was inevitable, it would have been much better to give the Tanks a run for their money. III _Villers Bretonneux_ It was not till the German offensive had lasted for more than a month that opposing Tanks at last met in battle. The enemy had pushed us back to within six or seven miles of Amiens, and he now planned a more or less full-dress attack upon positions on high ground, which were, in fact, the outer defences not only of the town, but of the vital Amiens-Paris railway. A break through on this sector would be a serious disaster, and the situation was an anxious one. The weather was unsettled, and the mornings often still misty in the Somme country. At 6.30 on April 23 the river fog lay thick, and under cover of this mist the Germans attacked the whole of the line south of the Somme after a short and particularly intense bombardment. A company of heavy Tanks of the 1st and seven Whippets of the 3rd Battalion had been hastily moved up into the domain of the 3rd Corps, north and south of Villers Bretonneux, where it was rumoured that the Germans were going to use Tanks, and, in fact, when at last the first little knots of German infantry appeared through the fog, three huge forms accompanied them.