Cambrai

What ended up as the “battle of Cambrai” was originally envisaged by Major Fuller as a tank raid upon the headquarters of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria some miles behind the German lines. The tanks were to strike at one of the most vital communication centers in the German rear and retire after twelve hours.

Now that Haig’s premature use of the tank had alerted the whole German Army to its dangers. Fuller’s “tank raid” idea could perhaps turn the loss of surprise into an advantage. One successful raid of this sort could keep every German unit constantly fearful of another one. And, of course, the tank men were not blind to the fact that a successful raid would ensure wonderful publicity for the tank units.

To what extent the actions of Haig and his fellow brass hats were influenced by a resentment of the attention that the Tank Corps had already attracted we cannot be certain. In any event, Haig squashed Fuller’s plan and carried on with his third battle of Ypres. After ten days of artillery bombardment he sent his soldiers into reclaimed marsh. Nearly a quarter of a million men were lost in what went down in history as the British Army’s most costly advance and gave many families—mine included—a new word to shudder at: Passchendaele.

When even Haig began to realize that Passchendaele would give him no glory, he reconsidered Fuller’s idea of a tank raid at Cambrai, rolling downland where the Germans sat behind the formidable fortifications of the Hindenburg Line.

In the initial stages the tanks achieved complete surprise. Specially modified tanks bridged trenches, breached barbed wire, and brought supplies forward. Radio-equipped tanks reported as the attackers rolled forward no less than four miles in a war where progress was usually measured in yards.

But Fuller’s ideas for a raid had been changed into a full-scale offensive, with unrealistic objectives and poor planning for the followup. There were no reserves ready to hold the captured ground, and the cavalry, who had spent years clamoring for a chance to exploit a breakthrough, were now not clever enough or quick enough to do so.

The Germans rushed to close the gap in their defenses and the British victory turned sour. Significantly, the British General HQ gave special prominence to any German successes against the British tank force. But “the incentive of a mention in despatches was not accorded to enemy feats performed at the expense of the infantry or cavalry,” notes Liddell Hart dryly in his History of the World War, 1914-1918.

Soon the British had lost their newly captured ground, and more. Yet enough publicity had been given to the initial success for England’s church bells to peal, for Haig to redeem his reputation, and for Cambrai to be written into history books as a British victory.

Anxious to escape censure for the staff shortcomings displayed at Cambrai, British senior officers tried to shift blame onto their own fighting men. The official court of enquiry supported this libel, using false accounts of the fighting to add credence to it.