data rate Tanks were an unexpected and terrifying weapon when they first appeared in battle during World War
CHAPTES SEEDS OF DISCONTENT Dawn September 15 1916 Bert Chaney a 19 year old soldier's in the British army awoke from a restles night s sleep in the muddly trench he and his companions called home Chaney outfit was stationed near the Somme River in northern France Enemy German soldiers were positioned in small village caled Flers a located on the other side of a wide rubble filled field Suddenly Chaney and his mates were startled by the sound of strange throbbing noises coming from behind them They whirled around to see what looked like two huge mechanical monsters advancing their way The young soldiers had never seen anything like them before The strange vehicles were the new weapons Bert had heard about British tanks The soldiers sat in stunned silence as
the iron giants rumbled across the field toward the German occupied village Without warning the tanks began firing their machine guns which were mounted on both sides of each vehicle The bullets tore into the wood and brick buildings of the village where the German soldiers were positioned The tanks pushed down walls and flattened everything that stood in their way As they did the British commander ordered Chaney and his companions into the village There they overwhelmed the German troops and took hundreds of prisoners Chaney had witnessed the birth of a new battlefield weapon the armored tank This powerful fighting machine would come to dominate all future wars Yet it will always be remembered for making its debut on the bloody battlefields of World War I 1914 1918 A WORLDWIDE TRAGEDY World War I also known as the Great War was fought on a scale never before known or imagined It was the first truly world war fought by more than 65 million soldiers from five continents from North America to Asia Roughly 8 5 million soldiers sailors and airmen were killed and 21 million were wounded Another 5 million civilians are estimated to have died from warfare hunger and
The Great War was tremendously damaging to both people and landscapes The four years of brutal fighting changed the world in cataclysmic ways The great sprawling empires and monarchies of Europe Russia Germany and Austria Hungary were shattered and replaced by new forms of government The Ottoman Empire was defeated and split apart giving birth to new nations in the Middle East The United States which entered the war late began its rise as an international superpower In combat the Great War was a conflict of firsts It was the first war to make use of chemical weapons such as the poison gases chlorine and mustard gas Mass bombings of civilian populations from aircraft occurred for the
