Cambrai was the last battle fought by the British on the Western Front in 1917. With Russia out of the war, Italy on the brink of collapse, and the French still reeling from the effects of widespread mutiny, Britain was the only member of the Western Allies still capable of holding the mighty German Army at bay. They did so by taking the fight to the Germans in one of the greatest turning point battles of twentieth-century warfare.
At dawn on 20 November 1917, the British attacked the German lines with almost 400 tanks - the first ever mass use of this brand new weapon of war. The Germans were taken completely by surprise and crumpled beneath the blow. For a brief moment it looked as though a stunning breakthrough had been achieved, and church bells rang out across England in celebration. But the Germans were not defeated. Indeed, they used their counterattack as an opportunity to pioneer their own new 'stormtroop' tactics, and suddenly the British were in disarray. In a series of bloody and terrifying reverses the British were driven right back to their start lines.
Over the decades many myths have grown up about this iconic battle. For one thing, it was not the tanks that most shocked the Germans at Cambrai at all, but brilliant British innovations in artillery techniques. But such was the potency of the tank myth that after the war it seduced generals and historians on both sides, until the myth was finally brought to reality in the mobile battles that engulfed Europe just thirty years later.
In this new look at one of the century's most important battles, Bryn Hammond tells the story of what exactly happened at the end of 1917, and how the myths that were created in those tragic two weeks were to change the face of warfare forever.
