Not only were these two Battalions disposed of, but by nightfall it was clear that for the time being at least some circumstance had definitely held up the German advance. We did not know it, but our defences had withstood and survived the last hungry lickings of the great spring tide. Its impulse was too far spent to overflow the frail dam of our Villers Bretonneux positions. The German advance had reached slack water. There had been one incident which had genuinely cheered the hard pressed men of the Tank Corps. At the very blackest moment of the retreat, when machines were being sacrificed by the dozen, and when the grey waves of the German infantry seemed to pursue our weary men with endless, tireless iteration, General Elles received a telegram from Mr. Docker, the chairman of the Metropolitan Carriage Company of Birmingham:-- “A resolution has been passed unanimously by the Works people of the Metropolitan Carriage Company to forgo any holidays, and to do their utmost to expedite delivery of Tanks to assist their comrades in the Field.” CHAPTER XV THE EQUILIBRIUM--MINOR ACTIONS--HAMEL--THE BALLON D’ESSAI It is not perhaps too fanciful to envisage the battles of April 24, 25 and 26, though they were by no means uniformly satisfactory little actions, as belonging to a different and a happier era than the action of Villers Bretonneux itself. On the 23rd we had been fighting for our lives. Through the three subsequent days’ fighting, it began to be more and more obvious that a change had taken place. Either through our desperate efforts to save Amiens, or by the workings of some deeper cause, spent and disorganised as we were, we had begun to pull level with the Germans again. The change was slight, but none the less palpable. On the 25th, a few Tanks of the 1st and 3rd Battalions fought with the 3rd Corps in a counter-attack against the most advanced of the new German positions in the Bois d’Aquenne. The Tanks did a good deal of execution, and we succeeded in driving in some of the forward German posts. On the 26th, four Tanks of the 1st Brigade had an interesting experience. The Allied forces on this part of the line consisted of a most curious mixture of arms and races. The scene, for example, in a neighbouring wood about ten days before is thus described by the historian of the 1st Battalion: “The Bois d’Abbé presented a most picturesque spectacle, and any one taking the trouble to walk through it could have had the unique experience of seeing practically every branch of both the British and French Armies represented. In this wood were to be found Tanks of all descriptions, Mark IV.’s, V’s, Whippets and French Rénaults, heavy and light artillery, British infantry, Australians, French cavalry and infantry, Moroccans, and lastly a detachment of the Legion of Frontiersmen mounted on little Arab ponies, which presented a strange contrast to the heavy Percherons of the artillery.”