Tank Men

At 5.15 on the morning of 15th September

a hundred years ago,

German troops, right here along the Western Front,

heard a strange mechanical noise emerging from the smoke-filled haze.

Suddenly, an iron giant appeared from the gloom,

crawling closer to the German position, flattening barbed wire.

Machinegun bullets appeared to bounce off its metallic plating.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

"The devil is coming," a German shouted.

Another yelled, "There's a crocodile crawling into our lines."

"Panic spread like an electric current,"

reported a German infantryman, as word passed along the trenches.

The enemy had come face-to-face with Britain's secret weapon - the tank.

Crammed inside was a crew of eight,

including rookie lieutenant 20-year-old George Macpherson.

In pitch-black, suffocating conditions,

George and his crew ploughed ill-prepared towards the enemy.

What are we going to do?

Just in front of George was tank C22,

commanded by his best friend, Basil Henriques.

Fire!

Only one of them would return home.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Thousands of soldiers from both sides lost their lives

in this landmark battle,

but it was a military milestone

that would change the face of armed warfare for ever.

The story of pioneering men like George and Basil,

who crewed the Great War tanks, is one of inspiration, courage,

and in the face of disaster,

a belief they could help win the war.

A hundred years ago, in the summer of 1916,

the fields behind me would have been unrecognisable.

Beneath the smoke, dust and flies that hovered by day

and the crackling sound of gunfire by night

lay a devastated landscape.

For two years,

the Germans had been advancing across Europe at pace.

But here in northern France, it became stalemate.

A 430-mile network of trenches cutting across Belgium and France

stopped both sides from making any gains.

Known now as the Battle of the Somme,

the losses are hard to comprehend.

On the first day alone, over 20,000 men were killed.

The Allies looked for a new plan of attack.

Well, the First World War, you've got to remember,

it's Germany invades France and Belgium,

we have the problem of pushing that army back out of occupied territory.

We're getting the casualties as the Germans have dug in

to the best ground they've captured and are holding.

We've got to come up with a new way of fighting this war.

Something with tracks

that can crush down the barbed wire,

put the men inside with armour plate to protect them,

give it some sort of firepower, and with any luck,

that will be what answers the problem.

Whilst engineers struggled with designs for a new armoured vehicle,

young men across the country were signing up to the war effort.

TRAIN WHISTLE TOOTS

-That was taken on our wedding day, George.

-She's lovely.

George Macpherson and Basil Henriques met on 15th October 1915.

-Have you got a girlfriend, George?

-No.

-No?

Both had joined the Royal East Kent Regiment,

or Buffs as they were known.

19 when he joined the Army,

George had been a talented sportsman at Winchester College.

He had a deep faith and a passion for football.

No chance, Georgie boy.

Shortly after joining up, Basil married his sweetheart, Rose.

He was six years older than George

and was a youth worker in the East End of London.

Like George, Basil had also studied at Winchester College.

He later went on to graduate from Oxford University.

In his diary, Basil wrote about the time he and George first met.

GEORGE LAUGHS

"We at once became friends.

"George had one of the simplest and profound faiths

"I have ever come across.

"Never doubting, his religion uplifted him

"so he was full of loving charity."

What are we playing for this time?

"Tall, with an almost girlish complexion,

"and pure light blue eyes,

"he was typical of the flower of England's youth."

-Are you going to try and beat me this time, George?

-We'll see.

On 13th April 1916,

George and Basil were summoned to London for a top-secret meeting.

"George and I were sent for by the commanding officer.

"Our interview was short."

-Can either of you drive a motor car?

-No, sir.

"The Colonel was very vague as to the mission

"on which we might be sent."

-BOTH:

-No, sir.

-You can learn.

"He told us he'd selected us two out of all the officers in command,

"he looked us up and down

"and emphasised the utmost secrecy of what we were going to do."

-Thank you, sir.

-Thank you, sir.

"We left him more mystified than ever."

They didn't know it then, but that short interview was all it took

for them to be recruited

into a special unit of the Machine Gun Corps.

Basil and George would be commanders

in what was to become the first-ever Tank Regiment.

The War Office looks for people who are the right sort, as ever,

but the unit that forms together is a real hotch-potch.

One guy described them as a band of brigands,

so a really peculiar mix of guys come together

to serve on those first tanks.

RUMBLING

George! There's the tank.

"No first-born child has ever been welcomed

"with quite so much excitement as we welcomed Mother -

"the first tank.

"And no mother has ever enjoyed playing with her child as we did."

This is the stealth bomber of its day.

This is something very new, very cutting edge.

So, they're very eager, and that rippling effect,

you can hear it in all the different diaries and the letters that exist,

this amazement,

"This is what we're actually going to be going to war in."

"There were four men on the guns, two on the gears,

"the driver and the officer.

"We were a team of eight in a very cramped space."

One of the most vivid descriptions comes from Captain D Hickey,

who was a member of the Tank Corps.

In his memoirs, he writes...

"The door to our tank was horizontal,

"so the only way to get in was to lever oneself on one's stomach.

"It was like getting into the witch's oven

"of Grimms' fairy tale."

But you have to remember, these were the very primitive designs,

and the comfort of the crewmen wasn't really a consideration.

After only a few weeks of training,

Basil and George prepared to set off to France.

"Neither of us had the least idea

"what the Somme battlefield looked like.

"We pictured ourselves slowly wending our way to Berlin

"over beautiful parkland such as we were now practising on."

Everyone's very confident in one sense,

but underneath it all, afterwards,

they realise how unprepared, how they haven't had enough training,

how they're not quite ready

in the way that they should have been when they look back.

"We had no training with the infantry,

"and the infantry had never heard of us.

"It was one huge game.

"Little did we know how much time we wasted."

On 14th September 1916,

Basil and George arrived in an area nicknamed by the troops

as Chimpanzee Valley.

Their mission was to capture a major German defensive position

east of the town of Albert.

..Come from over that way, and then looking...

Retired soldier and military historian Richard Porter

has spent years researching the battles that took place here.

-Probably would have been around here, would it?

-Yeah, just about.

So if we kind of...

You know, if we stand here and then we look at this

and then we start to look in that direction,

it was one of the assembly areas for the tanks.

It was really a place to refuel.

It was a stopping point before they went into action the following day.

What would it have been like for them here in this holding position?

It would have been unusual, it would have been alien to them.

They would have been celebrities whilst they were down here.

The infantry that are here, they've never seen a tank before.

They would be approaching,

they'd come up to the tank and ask them questions about the tank,

literally, "What is this?"

As the sun set over the Somme on 14th September,

200,000 soldiers slowly crept into place,

ready for the first-ever tank attack.

GUN AND ARTILLERY FIRE

Basil and George would each be responsible for a crew of seven men

and their cutting-edge machines.

"The night before zero day was a fearful ordeal.

"We were both terrifically excited,

"but the feeling of utter nervousness

"and physical exhaustion was uppermost."

Diaries of other soldiers reflect similar fears.

"Mostly in shell holes, we awaited zero hour.

"Very little was said.

"We were all just busy with our own thoughts.

"Seconds seemed minutes, and minutes seemed hours during this wait."

"Up until this time, my nerves had not been troubling me.

"But now I began to experience the sort of feeling

"just before tooth extraction,

"a sort of not afraid, but I hope it won't hurt, sensation."

Right, lads, all ready.

Focus.

Start the engines.

Trap one, trap two.

Two, one.

ENGINE RUMBLES

-Full speed, both traps.

-On my command.

So, where are we up here, Richard?

-This is the Quadrilateral.

-OK.

It was really... a defensive position

from the Germans' perspective.

It was a redoubt, as sometimes we call them.

It's a fortress, it's a bastion within the German lines.

The Germans have specifically placed this location here,

these trenches here, so they could have a good view down

on any attacking force coming towards them.

-OK, start the engines.

-Crank her up, lads.

-Engine caught, sir.

-Forward 100 yards.

In the early hours of the morning,

Basil and George's tanks set off towards their rendezvous point

at Wedge Wood just behind me here.

The tank crew, they just want their opportunity for their glory.

They want to get out there, they want to prove themselves,

and they want to prove the tank's worth, basically.

But almost immediately, George's tank had mechanical problems.

Engine trouble, sir.

-What's the problem?

-Not sure, sir.

The tank ground to a halt.

Quite a number of the tanks don't even cross the start line

to do the initial advance,

because they either get stuck, they can't find the right position,

restart the engine, all sorts of troubles are going on.

Whilst mechanics tried to fix George's tank,

Basil reluctantly pressed on ahead.

Left!

"I went on alone.

"I minded this awfully,

"for George and I had become such devoted friends

"that we did not care what we did together.

"His serene nature and quiet sense of humour had meant much to me,

"and I would have liked to have him near

"for the greatest of adventures."

Ten degrees to the left.

When you get to that situation, entering the battlefield,

it's the crew around you that hold it all together.

It's that unity, it's that getting forward,

wanting to reach the objective together,

and it gives each other strength.

Without that, it's very difficult.

As Basil's tank roared towards the front line,

infantry got their first-ever view of Britain's secret weapon.

"Eventually, we saw the hum of machinery coming up behind us."

Here, look, boys.

"And saw through the mist great toad-like things

"with caterpillar tracks."

What the hell's that?

Everyone's kind of looking at them

almost like the knights charging forward into battle,

and the infantry are going to follow on behind.

There was a huge expectation

that they've got to be able to assist their brothers in arms,

get onto that target without getting held up on wire

and without getting massacred.

"I saw, for the first time, tanks, or as we called them, caterpillars.

"Somehow, the feeling of what these would do to the Jerry

"lightened the desperate feeling I had at heart."

At six o'clock that morning,

Basil's tank advanced, opening fire on the enemy.

Prepare to fire.

For a short time, it dominated the field,

allowing the British military to advance with it.

Fire!

Ten degrees north.

-Firing!

-Fire.

The Germans can see these tanks coming towards them,

and they're thinking, "What is this?"

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

On day one, there's accounts of German soldiers in awe,

standing there with their mouths open,

just seeing this thing coming towards them.

But the British soldiers were doing fairly similar.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

All of a sudden, after that brief pause,

the Germans put down a full raft, basically, upon the tanks.

-Incoming.

-ARTILLERY FIRE

Right, right, right, right.

To protect his crew,

Basil ordered for the front flaps on the tank to be closed,

leaving a small periscope as their only means of seeing out.

MACHINEGUN FIRE

You've got large shards of metal

literally ripping through the tanks and taking out the crew inside

and, in some instances, destroying the tank itself.

Reverse!

Hold, hold.

So after what might have appeared to be an initial successful advance,

that success started to slow down?

It does start to break down. The attack does start to break down.

Fire.

It would have been terrible.

You can just imagine the bullets

that would have been ricocheting off the side of the armour plating.

The noise inside would have been horrendous. Absolutely deafening.

The crews themselves couldn't even talk to each other.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

"Bullets hitting the tank sound like sledgehammers in your ear.

"They knock off tiny pieces of red-hot metal."

BULLETS RICOCHET

"These fly off and cut you about.

"The worst thing was that the bullets began coming in

"through the gaps in the armour plate

"and ricocheted around the tank."

The visibility looking outside the tank,

the observation looking outside the tank,

you could hardly see a thing.

"The air over our heads

"was suddenly filled with the sowing and sighing,

"whining and screaming of thousands of shells of all calibres,

"making it impossible to hear anything."

-ARTILLERY FIRE

-Fire! Hold, hold.

Left, left, left, left, left.

WHISTLE BLOWS

"It was a yell that my crowd went over the top.

"The yells were soon death screams."

"The Germans poured shells on us.

"The flashes of the bursting shells were all round me."

"I cannot describe what it felt like."

"The nearest approach of a picture I can give

"is it was like standing at the centre of the flame

"of a gigantic primus stove."

In the midst of the battlefield carnage,

the crews inside the tanks were continuing to find design flaws.

With the doors closed, it was almost pitch-black in here,

apart from a single dim electric bulb.

The first models were equipped with supposedly bulletproof glass prisms

which fitted in these slots here to help see out.

But often, these shattered when hit by machinegun fire.

And that's exactly what happened to Basil.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

Shattered glass hit him in the face.

I'm blind, I'm blind!

Bullets were penetrating the tank. BULLETS RICOCHET

Basil's driver got hit.

GUNSHOT

And so did his gunner.

GUNSHOT

Back down, sir.

The technology they had staked their lives on was failing.

And the Germans were firing armour-piercing bullets.

GUNFIRE

We need to get out of here.

In a tank riddled with holes, and with a heavily injured crew,

Basil had no choice but to turn back.

Retreat, retreat.

Turn!

"How we got back I shall never understand."

Forward 200 yards.

"We dodged shells from artillery.

"It was like hell in a rough sea made of shell holes.

"I hate to think of it all."

Richard's just noticed, in the corner of his eye here,

some shells...

-Yeah.

-..just sitting here at the edge of the field.

Yep. They're from a German 77mm field gun.

-These are from the Battle of the Somme?

-Yeah.

These are the same artillery shells

that would have been fired onto the tanks as they advanced, as well.

-These have probably, what, just been dug out of these fields?

-Yeah.

As the farmers have been ploughing the fields,

they put them at the side,

and then the bomb disposal come along and pick them up.

Still to this day,

around 40 tonnes per year are found on the battlefield.

40 tonnes. Just on the Somme battlefield.

For the whole Western Front, it's around 500 tonnes.

Wow.

Under constant fire, Basil finally managed to guide his wounded crew

to the relative safety of the British base.

In amongst the thousands of soldiers that were heading out to battle,

he spotted a familiar face.

"I met George, who had finally got his tank to go."

With his engine patched up, George had been ordered into battle.

Good luck.

"He looked aghast at my bloodstained face,

"and then, with a smile, got into his tank and went off."

By the time George arrived at the front line,

it had already been six hours

since the enemy had been taken by surprise,

and six hours makes a big difference in war.

-Forward 100 yards.

-Taking fire!

German artillery was relentlessly pounding the battlefield,

and George's inexperience was becoming clear to his crew.

"Our tank commander was Second Lieutenant Macpherson,

"a fine and likeable young fellow,

"but he, like all of us, had never been in an actual battlefield

"or in action before."

Sir... Sir, what are we doing?

"The briefing and instructions regarding objectives

"were quite inadequate."

-What are we going to do? Sir!

-GUNFIRE

"We came up against machinegun fire.

"I counted 40 holes in the other tank."

As they made their way through no-man's-land,

first-hand accounts describe crews having little option

but to drive over the dead and dying.

"That day, I saw sights which were passing strange to a man of peace.

"I saw their madness bayonet each other without mercy.

"I saw men torn to fragments.

"Worse than any sight,

"I heard agonised cries and shrieks of men in mortal pain.

"Cries of those tortured men I'll never forget.

"They are with me always."

Low on fuel and under a bombardment of fire,

George was ordered to retreat.

So, where are we here, Richard?

This is Delville Wood, and it's now a commemorative site.

It's very typical of the type of woods

that you would have had around in this area.

-George and Basil fighting in their tanks about two miles away?

-Yes.

But there were other tanks being used in battles in woods like this.

Yes. The woods themselves were just totally shattered,

they were just totally devastated.

So, what we see here now is very different.

-We're walking through...

-A trench line.

This is an original First World War trench line.

This is what remains of that trench line.

It's still estimated now

that there's around 5,000 soldiers in here.

-In the woods here now?

-In the woods here now, yeah.

Soldiers that had been buried alive

or potentially killed by small arms ammunition.

It's kind of like a living cemetery.

It's very peaceful and tranquil now, but, you know, of that period than,

absolute, utter death and destruction.

Unlike those who died in the woods,

George's crew managed to make it off the battlefield.

But after the retreat, George was seriously wounded.

How this happened is unclear.

After the war, the Brigadier in charge of George's unit

wrote that one of his tank commanders

had turned his gun on himself.

Sir's been shot.

"I heard another officer report that he shot himself

"and left a paper on which he wrote, 'My God, I have been a coward.'

"I concealed this to save his parents unnecessary grief.

"Poor old chap. He was only a schoolboy."

The Brigadier's account has never been verified.

The telegram sent to George's parents

simply states that he "died of wounds".

However he was injured,

we know George was taken to the casualty clearing station

just outside the village of Meaulte,

a place known to the soldiers as Grove Town.

Tragically, within four hours of arriving here,

he died.

The clearing station later became a cemetery

for some of those who died at the Somme.

Here it is.

Final resting place of Lieutenant George Macpherson.

Machine Gun Corps. Died 15th September 1916.

It was three months before Basil found out

that his best friend had died.

-Sit down, Lieutenant.

-Thank you, sir.

"They listened to my experiences

"and only then did they tell me about George."

George Macpherson?

"I had not yet forged for myself

"that curious steel plate armour which, as the war advanced,

"seemed to grow round one's heart so that one scarcely felt the pain.

"The parting death of a loved one

"has never hurt so much since the war.

"The plate has remained round the heart.

"I think it perhaps has made me less sympathetic.

"But it also made the sorrow of life more tolerable.

"I only know George was a great hero off the battlefield

"and I'm sure he must have been on it."

After the war,

Basil went on to transform the lives of hundreds of Jewish children,

setting up boys' clubs in the East End of London.

..The Duke was met by Sir Basil Henriques...

He was knighted in 1955,

but the war had changed Basil forever.

At the Tank Museum in Dorset,

the smallest item on display tells a big story.

This ring came to the Tank Museum in the 1960s,

and was donated by Rose Henriques after Basil passed away.

It's actually formed of a piece of glass

that shattered in Henriques' face during the attack on 15th September.

Henriques decided to save this piece of glass in his face

and later had it mounted on a ring, which he gave to his wife.

-So, that is the piece of glass...

-Yeah.

-..from that tank?

-Yes.

It's just the fact that, you know,

this happened to him on the battlefield,

which he then made into a sort of more happy memory

by making it into a ring for his wife.

By the end of the First World War,

the Allies had produced nearly 6,000 tanks.

Sacrifices were high,

but the experience gained from the first tank battles

proved invaluable in saving the lives of those that followed.

Really, it's one great big experiment

that we, fortunately, learned a lot of lessons from,

but it's at the cost of some of the men

and some of the crews on the day.

You look at the photographs of how young they are doing all this,

you know, what tremendous pressures.

That is an amazing achievement that we must respect them for.

George Macpherson was 21 when he died at the Somme.

Sir Basil Henriques lived until 1961.

He was 71 when he died.

"The nervous strain in this first battle of the tanks,

"for officers and crew alike, was ghastly.

"Of my company,

"one officer went mad and shot his engine to make it go faster.

"Another shot himself.

"He thought he had failed to do as well as ought.

"If only we had some kind of training with the infantry.

"If only there had been proper practice over ground.

"What a marvellous story might this battle have been."