British soldiers rest in a German trench near the battalion's stranded Mark IV tank following the battle of
GAAPLES THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI a light mist shrouded the earth as dawn broke near Cambral France on the morning of November 20 1917 The silence and stillness of the morning stood in stark contrast to the violent groundbreaking battle that was moments from starting A line of almost 400 British tanks stretched for nearly six miles 10 km These massive metal beasts stood hidden and camouflaged among the trees behind the British trenches As daylight arrived the tanks began moving Lines of infantry followed behind The colossal machines crawled across the gently rolling landscape They advanced over the British line and into no man's land heading directly for the German
The tanks cut commanding figures on the battlefield These hulking armed and armored vehicles measured 26 feet 7 9 m long and towered more than 8 feet 2 4 m off the ground Their caterpillar tracks carried them easily over the uneven ground and stripes of war paint camouflaged their metal bodies Although they moved no more than four miles per hour 6 4 kmh the tanks handily overcame German defenses They attacked their enemies with machine gun fire Bullets pinged off their metal bodies They crushed the nests of barbed wire littering no man s land They uprooted trees standing in THE GREAT WAR World War I lasted from July 28 1914 until were the Central powers and the Allies November 11 1918 The conflict started Germany and Austria Hungary formed the after the assassination of Austro Hungarian Central powers while the United Kingdom Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 1914 France and Russia made up the Allies When in Sarajevo Bosnia by a member of a Serbian the United States entered the war in 1917 it terrorist group Ferdinand was heir to the joined the Allies Fighting took place on the Austro Hungarian throne Tensions between eastern and western fronts Stretching north European countries were high even before to south from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea but his assassination led Austria Hungary to the eastern front included fighting in most declare war on Serbia which appealed to of Eastern Europe and spread into Central its ally Russia As a result Austria Hungary's Europe The western front stretched from the ally Germany declared war on Russia on English Channel to the Swiss border August 1 1914 The two sides of the war
their paths They even drove over wide German trenches using heavy bundles of brushwood as makeshift bridges At 6 20 a m the British opened fire on the unsuspecting German line bombarding NO MAN's LAND No man's land was the desolate neutral ground between the lines of the Allies and the Central powers Exploded shells and gunfire scarred this dangerous stretch of land Soldiers attempting to charge the enemy had to cross through no man's land This left them vulnerable to gunfire from enemies who were protected by their trenches As a result bodies of dead soldiers from both armies were strewn across the ground unburied them with machine guns shells and explosives As one British tank officer described The whole of the enemy's lines were lit up in a tossing bubbling torrent of multicolored flame 3 A hail of German machine gun fire and trench mortars fell around the tanks in response But the tanks armored bodies were bulletproof against machine gun fire and no obstacle seemed difficult for the tanks to overcome A German officer later recounted his chilling encounter with the British tanks at Cambrai I could see a whole chain of these steel monsters advancing toward our trenches The tank to our front was barely a hundred meters 330 feet away by now The light machine gun had fired off its last belt of ammunition without visible effect what was to be done 2 4 The German soldiers were left apparently defenseless against the new British weapon They could only watch as the war machines continued their slow measured advance toward their
