De verovering van Poelkapelle was zeker dringend, want anders kon geen vooruitgang gemaakt worden, noch links (in de richting van het Houthulstbos), noch rechts (in de richting van Passendale). Maar achter de dorpskom van Poelkapelle lagen nog altijd die bijna niet te overkomen Bayernstellung en Flandern I—Stellung met het enorme versterkte steunpunt van de The Brewery.
Het zou op 9 oktober een dag van succes worden voor dc geallieerden, maar dat lag dit keer niet aan de tanks, maar aan de infanterie. Deze immers zou doordringen tot voorbij de Tanks
Tijdens de nacht van 8 op 9 oktober werd de volgende tankopstelling met hun doelen aan alle betrokken afdelingen van het D-bataljon meegedeeld. (Dit bestond toen uit 92 officieren en 859 manschappen.) Het zou blijken dat die doelwitten echter veel te optimistisch waren geschat...
Drie secties (12 tanks) moesten een aanval richten op de versterkte hofsteden Senegal Farm, Bertier Farm, Taube Farm en Colibri Farm.
Eveneens 12 tanks hadden te opereren tegen de volgende versterkte hofsteden:
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twee tegen Requete Farm
twee tegen Bower House
twee tegen Rubens Farm
twee tegen de hofsteden Conde Farm en Van Dyck Farm
twee van hofstede Tourenne Crossing naar de Kattestraat
twee van hofstede Tourenne Crossing naar Vijfwegen
Er waren in deze sector nog vier tanks voorzien in reserve.
Op het front van het XVIII Corps was de verdeling als volgt:
twee tanks naar Helles House en Nobles Farm
twee tanks naar Cameron House
twee tanks naar Meunier House
twee tanks naar Tracas Farm
De slag
De tanks vertrokken op 7 oktober vanuit hun standplaats te Boezinge richting St-Juliaan, waar ze verzamelden onder camouflagenetten, geschilderd zoals bakstenen en puin er zouden uitzien vanuit de lucht. Daar wachtten zij tot middernacht tussen 8 en 9 oktober. Want vóór die tijd was de enige berijdbare weg, de weg St-Juliaan-Poelkapelle, alleen beschikbaar voor de aanvoer van artillerie en munitie. Maar ook die weg, was weinig bruikbaar door de ontelbare granaattrechters, uiteengeslagen voertuigen, dode dieren, over de weg gelegde boomstammen zodat maar eventjes verlaten van die weg door de zware tanks leidde tot het onvermijdelijke slippen in de berm en vandaar in de sloot. Zoals onder meer gebeurde met één van de acht tanks die slijkwater kreeg over zijn carburator en niet meer verder kon. Nog erger werd het toen de Duitsers driekwartier vóór middernacht een geweldig bombardement lanceerden op de Brugseweg en rond de oprukkende tanks.
De eerste vier van de rij moesten ergens naar links kunnen uitwijken om zich bij het XIVth Corps te voegen, maar daarin konden ze pas slagen in het centrum van Poelkapelle zelf. Daar zouden ze dus proberen zich te verspreiden om hun doelen te bereiken.
D21 DREADNOUGHT II (lt. Shaw) die naar Nobles Farm moest, verzonk al bij Malta House; en werd stukgeschoten.
D27 DOUBLE DEE II (lt. Willis) moest naar Helles House, maar brandde uit bij het proberen door te komen aan Delta House.
D23 DASHING DRAGOON II (lt. Benn) had als doel Meunier House, maar is daar nooit geraakt. D24 DEUCE OF DIAMONDS (lt. Grant) moest naar Tracas Farm, maar kon niet voorbij Delta House, werd daar door een voltreffer geraakt en brandde uit.
Al deze tanks werden opgehouden door het wrak DRACULA (daar op 20 september stukgeschoten en achtergelaten).
De tanks die aan het XVIII Corps waren toegewezen, verging het al niet veel beter:
Tank D29 DAMON II (lt. Coghlan), die naar Conde Farm moest, verzonk net toen hij de Houthulstseweg wilde indraaien. Hij kon zich niet uit de slijkpoel redden, omdat hij zijn 'unditching beam' had gebroken en hij daarna nog een voltreffer kreeg.
D31 DOLLY (lt. Stevens) moest ook naar Treurniet, maar werd stukgeschoten bij Delta House.
30 DUSKY DISS (lt. Birks) moest naar Peace Farm (Ph. Pirate), maar werd voluit getroffen bij de Duitse begraafplaats (meer info) dichtbij Retour Crossing en brandde volledig uit. Een deel van de bemanning kwam om.
D32 DOP DOCTOR (lt. Butler) die de hoeve BertierFarm diende te bereiken, zakte compleet in de modder bij Delta House en geraakte niet meer los. Hij was ook de eerste die werd tegengehouden door het wrak van de D44 DRACULA en aldus de weg versperde voor alle andere tanks.
Aldus ontstond een echt tankkerkhof tussen Delta House en de Duitse begraafplaats: daar lagen op en door elkaar zes tankwrakken: D44, D31, D32, D27, D23 en D24. Daar niet ver vanaf lagen nog D21 bij Malta House en D30 bij de Duitse begraafplaats. Het droevige resultaat van die ongelukkige 9 oktober was dat geen enkele van de ingezette tanks nog te redden viel. Vier waren geraakt door voltreffers en uitgebrand, acht waren onherroepelijk verzonken in de modder.
Bron: Poelcapelle 1917:"Een spoor van tankwrakken" door Robert Baccarne.
THE BREWERY POELCAPELLE
9 oktober 1917:
11 Coy D BN carried out the last tank operation in the Ypres salient about 8th October 1917.The starting point of the attack being St-Julien and the objective The Brewery at Poelcapelle, thereafter the Coy. was to support the Royal Naval Division eventually withdrawing rather vaguely along a track to the North.
The Brewery was a heap of rubble surrounding the usual type of concrete strong point, which the Germans had constructed at most places of tactical importance, and commanded the road to Roulers.
The terrain was Flemish mud honeycombed with shell craters and, after ten weeks of almost continuous rain,semi bog.
The tanks were taken up from Oosthoek Wood over Essex Crossing and camouflaged in the ruins of St.Julien village forty-eight hours before the attack. The plan was to proceed line ahead over the Steenbeck along the pave road to Poelcapelle picking up the Naval Division about half way to the objective. I think eight tanks started; Hugh Skinner our Section Commander led the second section in a male tank aid mine being a female tank was second. The road itself Was a pave causeway slightly wider than a tank, broken in places with shell holes winding dark aid bleakly towards a hopeless horizon. It ran through a sea of mud reminiscent of a picture of the Abomination of Desolation, cratered inconceivably littered with the debris of battle and stinking of death.
Some of the tanks lost in the earlier fighting had sunk below their sponsons and one in fact had only the roof and top of the tracks showing.
The chances of survival appeared so remote that it required a great effort to cross even the Ypres canal and even a greater effort to conceal one's reluctance at the thought of yet another day spent on what was obviously a hopeless and abortive undertaking.
The tanks crawled out of St-Julien at first light accompanied by the usual drizzle which made the slippery road dangerous and difficult to the most expert drivers. We crawled along in relative silence apparently ail alone until peering through the murk on either side of the road one saw little knots of infantry wearily ploughing their way through the quagmire representing the main axis of the victorious advenes to Roulers.
Round a bend we cams upon disaster in the shape of a large tree, which had either been felled or blown across the road. The leading tank in trying to climb over it had slipped on the wet baak into the mud and had become ditched. Two other tanks had put on their unditching beams and bad tried to crawl round the outside of the ditched tank and had themselves become ditched. There was a slight pause and then
Skinner decided to lead the section over the tree, and by immaculate driving on the part of our drivers the three of us left crawled precariously up the trunk and slipped safely down the other side onto the road.
Our prace was then shattered by the opening barrage which came down a few hundred yards in front of us on what we imagined to be our objective, The Brewery at Poelcapelle. It was impossible to hear or see anything except the black road between the horns of the tank and we crawled slowly on, conscious that the German defensive barrage had come down and that we were in the middle of it. Suddenly an ear-splitting crash filled the tank with the acrid smoke of an exploding shell through which appeared a telltale flame - we had received a direct hit.
The fire was on the starboard side of the tank and the driver with great coolness switched off and put it out with his pyrenes. The direct hit had been occasioned by a shell which came in through the starboard doors and hit the engine, and we were hopelessly immobile. There was nothing in sight, and all we could do was to évacuate the task into the nearest shell hole. One gunner had practically lost his leg, he subsequently died, three others were more or less badly wounded. By this time we were in the middle of an absolute inferno. The last tank appeared in sight some twenty yards behind us commanded by Rosy Stephens. We crawled back dragging our wounded with us and explained to him that the road was hopelessly blocked in front and that to leave it was courting disaster in the shape of instantaneous bogging.
The driver with quite extraordinary skill managed to turn his tank on that narrow road literally by swinging inches at a time until he was once more facing in the direction of St-Julien and we withdrew down the road until we met the block we had passed previously and which now consisted of every tank which had started the advance except Hugh Skinner's, my own and Stephens. We did our best to by-pass the chaos, but the morass was too much and we bogged half way round. A very brave advance stretcher party took off the man without a leg and the rest of us set off across a path we had found in the direction of home. We eventually found a dressing station to drop the rest of the wounded, who were by this time in a bad condition, but were halted outside by a military policeman who said it was reserved for stretcher cases only. For the first time we were able to deal satisfactorily with an enemy met face to face.
H.L.B.
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Getuigenis Frank Mitchell:
On the 9th October eight tanks made a despairing effort to get into action against some strong points on the Poelcapelle road. Conditions had gone from bad to worse. Day and night, night and day, the enemy shelled the road. The surface was pitted with shell holes. For thirty long hours the rain had teerned down. The highway was one long series of slushy puddles, strewn with smashed limbers, and made foul by the bloated bodies of dead horses and fragments of human limbs.
Despondently the tanks picked their way up this nightmare of a road to their starting-point, the crossroads near Poelcapelle. The night was pitch dark, the pitiless rain beat down upon them in torrents. One tank, getting too near the edge, suddenly slipped over on one side, and slid helplessly into the gurgling water. The others reached the cross-roads. Shells were pouring down upon the dismal ruins of Poelcapelle in a frenzy of destruction.
The leading tank suddenly plunged into a new shell hole and became bellied. It strove so fiercely to climb out that the unditching gear broke. The second tank pulled up on the side of the road, waiting to pass, when a shell landed on top and set it on fire. These two maimed creatures blocked the way. It was impossible for the others to get by, so they slowly and cautiously turned round and crawled back again. Unfortunately the last tank had run into the ruins of a derelict and, swerving sideways across the road, became irretrievably ditched. The four remaining machines could now neither go backwards nor forwards : they were trapped ! There was no shelter anywhere, no hope of escape from the fierce storms of shells.
The four baffled monsters, puffing and snorting, turned helplessly this way and that. In a last despairing effort a couple plunged wildly off the road, only to become immediately bogged in the slimy water. The others were hit and mutilated. Before they recovered from the shock more shells descended and completely disabled them. Most of the crews were killed or wounded.
The rain still came down steadily. So did the shells. In a few minutes nothing stirred on that ill-omened road. Only eight huge carcasses remained, some battered beyond recognition, others lifting their snouts pathetically above the slimy waters.
It was a tragic end to a series of tragic battles for the tanks. After this disastrous episode no more tanks were used in the Ypres sector.
The road to Poelcapelle was now completely blocked by the derelicts, and supplies being thus cut off from the troops in front, it was essential for the obstructions to be shifted immediately. This dangerous task was undertaken by the chief engineer of the 1st Brigade of Tanks, with his stalwart salvage gang, who slaved every night to clear the road. In spite of intense shelling he managed to blow up most of the wrecks with heavy charges of guncotton, and within a week the road was free again.
The appalling scenes witnessed on the road are described in the following letter by an engineer officer who took part in the salvage work :
" I left St.Julien in the dark, having been informed that our guns were not going to fire. I waded up the road, which was swimming in a foot or two of slush ; frequently I would stumble into a shell hole hidden by the mud. The road was a complete shambles and strewn with débris, broken vehicles, dead and dying horses and men ; I must have passed hundreds of them as well as bits of men and animals littered everywhere. As I neared Poelcapelle our guns started to fire ; at once the Germans replied, pouring shells on and around the road ; flashes of the bursting shells were all round me. I cannot describe what it felt like ; the nearest approach to a picture I can give is that it was like standing in the centre of the flame of a gigantic Primus stove. As I neared the derelict tanks the scene became truly appalling ; wounded men lay drowned in the mud, others crawled and rested themselves up against the dead to raise themselves a little above the mud. On reaching the tanks I found them surrounded by the dead and dying ; men had crawled to them for what shelter they would afford. The nearest tank was a female. Her left sponson doors were open. Out of these protruded four pairs of legs ; exhausted and wounded men had sought refuge in this machine, and dead and dying lay in a jumbled heap inside."
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Meanwhile in England the fate of the tanks wavered i Tankfotos 9 Oktober the balance. On 11th October Mr. Winston Churchill, Minister of Munitions, told Colonel Stern, who supervised the output of tanks, that the War Office considered that tanks were a failure. They complained that they were being lumbered up with useless tanks at the front, and that millions of public money was being wasted. In their opinion there had been a total failure of design, no progress had been made, and their belief in mechanical warfare was at such a low ebb that they proposed to give it up entirely.
A few days later the then existing construction programme of 4,000 tanks for 1918 was cut down to 1,350. Colonel Stern immediately saw the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and pointed out that the reduced programme was totally inadequate. Next day Colonel Stern was dismissed from his job, and side-tracked into a new position connected with the development of tanks in France and America.
Colonel Stern had forgotten that he was dealing with the military mind. He, a mere temporary colonel, had dared to suggest to a powerful general that the infallible War Office was wrong. What was the world coming to? These jumped-up civilians must be taught a lesson. So Colonel stern, one of the staunch pioneers who had laboured and fought ceaselessly for tanks from their birth, was dismissed, and in his place an admiral was appointed who had never even seen a tank !
Thus, from the rear, the Tank Corps was dealt a heavy blow by enemies more dangerous than any German —the strongly-entrenched Almighties of Whitehall.
The tank units were all withdrawn from the dreaded salient by the latter part of October to refit and gird up their loins for new efforts.
The infantry and artillery remained to stagger on through the swamps. The weary and dispirited troops gathered up their ebbing strength into one supreme effort, and in the first week of November the heights of Passchendaele were stormed. The Third Battle of Ypres had ended at last. The cost to the British Army was nearly 400,000 casualties.
No battle could better illustrate the immense and criminal futility of war. Four hundred thousand of some of the best troops in the British Army were squandered to obtain a muddy ridge which, only four months later, was hastily abandoned when the Germans advanced.
The Tank Corps withdrew from the salient in a state of gloom. They had achieved so little at so great a cost. Every infantryman trudging over the duckboards could see the scores of derelict tanks lying helplessly in the slime. Everybody was remarking, " Tanks are no good ; look at them stuck in the mud all over the place."
In one way, however, good came out of misfortune, for the Germans, too, were now firmly convinced that as an instrument of warfare tanks were useless. They considered that they had been highly overrated, and took no steps to build tanks in large quantities.
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Getuigenis Royal Tank Corps:
KAPITEIN HORACE BIRKS ROYAL TANK CORPS:
Dat was de eerste keer dat ik in de strijd het bevel zou voeren over een tank en ik was doodsbang. Ik hoopte dat ik mijn enkel zou verzwikken, dat ze de boel zouden afblazen of iets dergelijks. Het uur der waarheid kwam almaar dichterbij en het ergste moment was toen we onze motoren startten en die terugsloegen en iemand een papier uit de uitlaat haalde en iedereen elkaar voor idioot uitmaakte terwijl we zaten te wachten op de dingen die komen gingen.
We klommen in de tank, de rupsbandbestuurders namen hun plaats in, de zijmitrailleur werd geïnstalleerd, de chauffeur stapte in, vervolgens, door het bovenluik, de officier en toen vertrokken we. We moesten het luik algauw sluiten omdat we binnen het bereik van machinegeweren waren en toen het luik dicht was, waren we volledig van de wereld geïsoleerd. We konden op geen enkele manier met de buitenwereld communiceren. Binnen werd het steeds warmer. De enige ventilatie die er was, was voor de motor, niet voor de bemanning. Als je naar buiten wilde kijken, moest je dat doen door een stalen periscoop die alles een onjuiste, doorschijnende gloed gaf. Binnen was het warm, broeierig en donker. En er was zoveel lawaai dat je niets kon horen en dus gebruikten de mensen gebaren om je iets te zeggen. Dat was de enige manier waarop je kon communiceren. Mijn tank reed nooit goed voordat de motor kookte, maar als hij kookte en je bleef doorrijden, dan ging het best goed.
Je merkte het meteen wanneer het spervuur geopend werd. Elke granaat die een paar meter van de tank insloeg, zorgde voor zo'n enorme drukverplaatsing dat je die dwars door de tank heen voelde. En wanneer een granaat tussen de wielen van de tank ontplofte, werd deze bijna in de lucht geslingerd. De machinegeweren waren makkelijk te herkennen, want hun kogels waren net erwten die op een blik kletteren.
KORPORAAL JACK DILLON 2ND BATTALION, TANK CORPS
Bij Passendale waren de geuren erg opmerkelijk en erg zoet. Echt heel erg zoet. De eerste geur die je opving, was een heel zoete geur. Later ontdekten we dat het de geur was van rottende lichamen, van mannen en muildieren. Daarna ving je de geur van chloorgas op. Dat rook net zoals de peerdrops die je als kind gekend had. Als de geur van peerdrops sterker en aantrekkelijker werd, wist je dat er meer gas was en dat het gevaarlijker was. Wanneer je op het pad liep en er viel een granaat in de modder, dan werd de modder omgewoeld en kwamen al die geuren naar boven.
Bron: 365 soldaten uit de Groote oorlog.
