Any one who has lived in an ordinary camp where there were no secrets and remembers what rumours flourished on the most ethereal food, can imagine their growth in a camp where there was a real mystery. But at last, towards the beginning of June, a limited number of Mark I. machines were detrained at a special railhead within the area.[7] The training of the Battalion now began in earnest. Machines and men were destined to be launched in little over six weeks’ time into the then newly begun Somme offensive. Two types of Tank were detrained, “Big Willie” and “Little Willie.” The Mark I. (Big Willie) was very different from the Mark V. machine described in Chapter I. It took four men to drive it. It had an unwieldly two-wheeled tail, or to give this appendage its official name, a “Hydraulic Stabiliser.” By this device it could let itself down gently over a drop of over 5 ft., and partly with the aid of it, the machine was steered. In practice, compared with the handy Mark V., the whole steering arrangement of the Mark I. was extraordinarily clumsy and laborious. She would not turn sharply at all on rough ground, and had to be coaxed to any change of direction. Her engine and tracks also needed constant adjustment, the rollers being an everlasting source of trouble. Drivers and mechanics who have handled both machines, seem to regard the running of a Mark V. as child’s-play after struggling with the caprices of “Mother.” “Little Willie” was used only as a training Tank, as in practice he was found to have a defective balance. His centre of gravity was misplaced, and he was, besides, too short for the work of crossing trenches. II But there were other than technical problems awaiting solution. It would be difficult to over-estimate the difficulties which confronted those officers who were responsible for the preliminary training of the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps; no one had ever actually fought inside a Tank, and it was, therefore, upon the spirit of prophecy alone that they must rely in their preparations. There was no manual to help them. They had, however, one very excellent official document, the secret _Notes on the Employment of Tanks_, which was issued in February 1916 (signed “E. D. S.”[8]), which gave an extraordinarily good forecast of what the rôle of Tanks would probably be when in action. But the paper was very short and very objective, and was more concerned with an analysis of the place of the Tanks in the orchestra of battle than with the difficulties presented by their individual score. This was where the training of the first Tank crew fell short--almost inevitably. Their teachers had a rather hazy mental picture of the actuality of battle. They did not squarely face the essential question upon whose answer all specific training and all specific preparation depend, the question, that is, “What is it going to be like?”