great guns of the British marine artillery, brought up to occupy the German heavy artillery. A tremendous roar from the shore replied as every one of the many guns began action. Star shells shot up, lighting the great smoke plumes; green flares and strings

of luminous green balls, which the airmen called "flaming onions," soared up and lost themselves in the clouds. Through all the glare and hail of shell, the Vindictive pushed steadily on.

And then came a fog, a real fog, dense, thick, moist! The

Vindictive lost her way; the motor boats could not see each other; their flames were lost in the fog. Twice the old battleship cruised across the harbor entrance, missing it both times. The third time there came a sudden rift in the mist and she saw the entrance dead ahead. She steamed over the bar and once she was in the German guns poured shells upon her. She was hit every few seconds, her decks and turrets destroyed, her guns put out of action, her officers and men killed and wounded. She laid her battered nose against the eastern pier and tried to swing across the channel, but she was too hard and fast in the mud to be moved. They blew the main charges beneath her, tearing out her bottom plates and sinking her in the channel. Her commander was dead already and many of the officers. Every man alive was taken off in motor launches which immediately ranged alongside. One by one, they made their way through the fog, back to the waiting cruisers and destroyers outside. The deed was done. Ostend harbor would no longer be useful to the Germans.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE BATTLE OF THE TANKS

THE war had scarcely begun before the deadly effect of machine gun fire was clear to the British and they set about experimenting with some sort of defense for the advancing troops. After a year and a half of experiment they produced the tank, which was first used on September 16, 1916. They had found an American machine created for the purpose of carrying heavy loads over bad roads. It was called a caterpillar tractor, and had no wheels but ran on a sort of endless chain moved by machinery and on which the tractor crawled forward. The tread of the chain was so broad that it could run over all sorts of mud, soft earth, and bad going without getting stuck. This provided the first requisite. The new weapon must not be impeded by ground dug up by shells; it must be able to climb through trenches or over them; it must be able to walk on barbed wire entanglements.

The British now put armor on the car, mounted guns in it, and thus created a land battleship which was impervious to small artillery fire. The purpose was to tramp down the barbed wire entanglements, which hindered the infantry, to hunt down the German machine gun nests, walk right up to them and clean them out. It had been proved that artillery fire could not wipe out the underground dugouts. At Verdun there was under one of the hills a dugout, called the Crown Prince, eight hundred feet long and twelve feet high, in which a whole regiment might take refuge, and from which it could pour out when the defense was needed.

The first time the tanks went into action the Germans were astonished and the British troops were so delighted that they were hardly able to stand from laughter and joy. One of the correspondents thus described one of the first engagements. "A

FRENCH TROOPS CHARGING PROTECTED BY LARGE FRENCH TANK, 1918. Note the men are lying down, not running.

tank had been coming along slowly in a lumbering way, crawling over the interminable succession of shell craters, lurching over and down and into and out of old German trenches, nosing heavily into soft earth, and grunting up again, and sitting poised on broken parapets as though quite winded by this exercise, and then waddling forward in the wake of the infantry. It faced the ruins of

S

the château and stared at them very steadily for quite a long time, as though wondering whether it should eat them or crush them. Our men were hiding behind ridges of shell craters, keeping low from the swish of the machine gun bullets and imploring the tank to 'get on with it.' Then it moved forward in a monstrous way, heaving itself on jerkily like a dragon with indigestion, but very fierce. Fire leaped from its nostrils. The German machine guns splashed its sides with bullets. ... But it got on top of the enemy's trench, trudged down the length of it, laying its sandbags flat and sweeping it with fire.”

One tank would march up single-handed to a whole trench full of Germans. It would crawl around until it could rake it and thus force the whole company to surrender. When the infantry came up, it would hand over the prisoners, who stood there holding up their hands, and lollop off in search of new adventures. One tank took a town single-handed, driving the Germans into the cellars, and wandering undisputed up and down the streets. The machine gun bullets rattled on its sides like peas, but to no purpose. Another tank got stuck in the mud and the Germans rushed upon it. "They flung bombs at it, clambered on to its back, and tried to smash it with the butt ends of rifles, jabbed it .with bayonets, fired revolvers and rifles at it." When the infantry arrived, between two and three hundred killed and wounded Germans lay on the ground around it. Presently, with a good deal of grunting and grinding, the tank heaved itself up and waddled off to find new foes.

But the tanks were at first not so effective as they were interesting. They were used at the Somme in September, 1916, and in the next year at Arras, Messines Ridge, and elsewhere, but were not really effective until the battle of Cambrai on November 20, 1917. The troops were here led against the Hindenburg