Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 278, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1916 — “THE HELL CAR’’ [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

“THE HELL CAR’’

The latest marvel of war, a huge engine of destruction, is an armored “caterpillar” motor truck which the British have used in trench wrecking work incidental to the progress of the great Somme fyr battle which began on July j first ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

mANKS” the British soldier calls them. ■ga-LuM Steel forts they really are, tiuge steel forts that lumber along on caterpillar wheels, steel forts that cun climb shell waters and project themselves over trenches. They are war’s latest marvel. Not long ago they changed the world’s ideas about trench fighting. Incidentally, they won a big engagement for their makers and masters, the British. This, according to Lawrence Flick, writing in the Philadelphia Record. It came about in a way highly dramatic. England’s men had been getting ready for a drive against German trenches in the West. The preparations had lasted many days. Thousands of fresh troops were there, Britain’s best Hundreds of big guns were in position, cunningly screened from the view of German airmen. Tons of ammunition were piled high in readiness on the artillery “dumps.” Then came the “tanks.” They had not been named before that first day when Tommy Atkins saw them. There was much laughter in the ranks when the new engines of death came trundling up to the lines. They were big, about twice the size .of the biggest motor truck, and as ungainly as so many mammoth steam rollers. They were heavily armored. They had guns pointing from carefully protected loopholes. They moved along like lazy caterpillars. Tommy laughed and called them “tanks.” * The “tanks” were a mighty good jokefor a few days. All sorts of witticisms were hung on them. But though Tommy “guyed” the new war engine, he took mighty good care that tils laughter should not be heard over In the German trenches. The enemy had no inkling of what was being prepared for him. The German lines, over across No Man’s Land, were as secure as barbed wire, sandbag parapets and concrete trenches could make them. Your German soldier is a thoroughgoing fellow. He knows how to make good trenches. He has learned the art of defending them well by means of machine guns craftily disposed. You can smash him up with big-gun fire, ahd force him to take to the shelter of his bombproofs. You can blast him out of his trenches and his dugouts with hand grenades. You can knife him into submission with bayonets. All this if you have sufficient men and ammunition to spare. Trench fighting, you know, is bloody business. Trenches are taken at fearful cost. The steady, slow advance of the British and French in the West has been made possible only by the sacrifice of thousands. German rifle fire is deadly; German ma-chine-gun fire particularly is withering and blasting. And the Germans, all through this war, have made it evident that they have plenty of machine guns and machine-gun ammunition. even If they are short of other necessaries. So it wasn’t a pleasant task that faced the British that gray September morning. They were ready for the push. They had no Illusions about the reception that awaited them, and no misgivings. They were grimly ready and resolved. They were going out to to take the German trenches over yonder, out beyond the reek of shell-torn, corpse-strewn No Man’s Land. And the “tanks” wore going along. Now it is no holiday jaunt, taking a motor trip across No Man’s Land. That bit of ground—it may be a hundred or a thousahd yards across —has been shot over for weeks or months. Shells have fallen there, and exploded, digging huge craters In the earth. Everywhere there are debris, the wreckage of man and beast. Tree trunks lie about, and stumps jut out. There may be broken-down and abandoned gull carriages, too, or smashed motor lorries, relics of a fight months ago. Then there are unexploded shells, waiting for a chance contact to set them off. There are lines and lines, moreover, of barbed wire, and there may be concealed mines, harmless til the passage of a charging company, and the touch of an electric switch in the enemy’s trenches transforms them into swift volcanoes. No Man’s Land is difficult ground for men to travel on foot; by motor car it is almostimpassable.

But the ‘“tanks” went along. It was still early in the day when the order to advance was given. For a halfhour or so the guns in the British lines —big guns, back a distance from the first-line trenches —had been speaking with a roar such as the Germans had not heard in months of fighting; This preliminary bombardment always gives notice of an impending charge, and the Germans were ready, in spite of an artillery fire so terrific that trenches were pulverized and bomb-proofs torn asunder/ Then, when the German trenches had been hammered thoroughly and for the prearranged time by the heavy guns, thfe order to charge ran along the lines. Officers looked at their watches, found that the exact second set for the charge had arrived, saw to the last details, and waited for the final signal which sent them leaping out with a cheer. The moment came, and the charge was on. But leading the van were the “tanks.” Tommy laughed and cheered, the big, crazy craft, for all the world like ferry boats climbing about on land, wheezed and banged their way ahead, in front of the first ranks of Britons. It Is related that the Germans, seeing the strange mechanical Contrivances emerge with the leaping battalions, stood at their posts and laughed with their foes. • And then their mirth became horror. German machine guns began to play their stream of leaden death upon the monsters. German rifles spat at them. German big guns, half a mile to the rear, had news of their coming by telephone, and the sweating crews in the gun pits tolled to change the range. But the “tanks” lumbered on. They lumbered on in a straight line, careless of what lay In their road. The scarred trunk of a shell-blasted tree stood In the way—a “tank” leveled it, and lumbered on. Right in front of a “tank” was a huge depression, as big as the bed of a pond, gouged out by a “Busy Bertha.” The “tank” lazily slid down the near bank, and drunkenly staggered nip the far one. Then came barbed wire, woven in a rusty spider’s web of tangled steel strands. The “tanks” never hesitated —they lumbered straight on through. And all the *.vhlle these “tanks” spilled out of their steel bungholes streams of death. And then they were at the trenches. The Germans were standing their ground, pumping their magazine rifles until the barrels were too hot to hold; feeding cartridges into the hoppers of their machine guns as fast as the crank would turn, hurling hand grenades and whiz-bangs as swiftly as they could draw back their throwing arms and let fly. But the “tanks” came on, slow, lumbering, complaining brutes of machines that writhed over obstacles as a caterpillar wriggles over a knot on a twig. They came on, right to tne sandbag parapets of the German first-line trench. And then happened a fearsome thing. The Germans on their firing platforms saw a broad steel snout root through the sandbags on the trench parapet. The whole mighty bulk of the monster was thrust forward and upward. The broad caterpillar wheel f under the snout hung poised for a moment, like the groping foot feeling for firm ground. Then the great mechanismjolted ahead trembling and groaning, while the machine guns in the “tank” swept the trench to right and left; hand grenades hurled by its crew sought out the Germans in the bomb-

proofs. The work begun by the “tank” was finished by the British infantrymen charging behind it. The “tank” scrambled over the rear wall of the first-line trench, and lumbered on toward the second. All along the line of the British charge, that misty September morning, the “tanks” led the way. All along the line they bridged the first line, and the second line trenches with their great steel bodies, and with their machine guns enfiladed and destroyed the defenders. They made military history that day. The “tanks” foretell a new method of warfare. England certainly will employ them in all future fighting. The stories of their amazing efficiency still pour In from the Somme battleground. The “tanks” have terrified the Germans, who will be put to it to invent an engine of destruction to equal them. The “tank” can go safely where men would never have a chance. Sandbags and earthworks are useless against the new British device. With “tanks” enough, it would be possible to blast the Germans out of France and Belgium in short order. Doubtless, Germany will counter this blow with a new device of her own. There is nothing secret about the “tank.”, Germany can improvise them, just as England did. The stroke of genius, of course, was the transformation of one of the most beneficent mechanisms of peace into the deadliest of the engines of war. For the “tank” of the Somme battlefield Is only the tractor of our own western wheat fields. Thus far only descriptions of the “tanks” have come to this side of the Atlantic. These descriptions are sufficiently detailed, however, to make it certain that the British simply have" taken huge tractors, which are said to have been supplied them by an American firm, sheathed them in complete armor, and mounted on them batteries of rapid-fire guns. The tractor’s virtue is in its ability to travel anywhere. It moves on steel rails, which are fastened to the under side of an endless belt. The outer side of the belt—the side that touches the ground—has a broad “caterpillar” tread. The steel rails are in short sections, of course, and are laid down and taken up automatjcally as the “tank” passes over them. The ■weight of the “tank” rests directly on wheeled trucks, which in turn run on the steel rails. The weight of the ponderous mechanism is very widely distributed, so widely that there is less pressure to the square inch of ground surface than a man of ordinary size exerts when he takes a step. The “tank,” therefore, can travel where a man would sink over his boot tops. The “tank” is so balanced, moreover, that the forward portion of It can be projected in space—as was done when the “tanks” crossed the German trenches —without danger or the machine toppling on its nose. Inequalities of ground mean nothing to the “tanks,” or to their forerunner, the tractor. They can scramble up the side of a hill. They can run over broken ground as easily as a barefooted boy. They have engines that develop 120 horse power. In our own West, the faripers use the tractor to draw batteries of plows.