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The conditions for the further employment of tanks at Ypres were demonstrably so unsuitable that we began to feel we should not be used there again. The last battalion attacks had hardly been able to flounder into danger. Our casualties in men turned out to be slight. Nevertheless I had one more jaunt, a reconnaissance of the Poelkap-pelle–Passchendaele front. By that time I was sufficiently angry and fed up to condemn in plain English the bit of the project on which it was my business to report.
And now officially-originated rumours began to circulate; we were to prepare for a new battle on ground ‘suitable for tanks’. We were given special maps of our area printed without names. We were to rehearse on land similar to that on which we were to fight; we were not to know our accompanying troops till the rehearsal; above all we were not to talk. The last injunction has by this time become a grim joke with reference to the Royal Navy as the Silent Service. Certain actions co-ordinated with the Royal Navy had become, first, topics for fascinated and fascinating women to discuss in luxurious hotels and clubs, and next, matters of serious concern to the German secret service and staff. For these the Army paid in blood. “If tea is the price of Admiralty, Lord God, we'll pay in blood.”
The section and tank commanders of the battalion were taken by car to some country of chalk downland. We waited at a cross-roads at the bottom of a declivity; on higher ground was a small group of officers including Gull and the Colonel “wearing a French letter”, as someone said about his transparent raincoat. He was as usual immaculate. Sometimes such dress is an expression of the personality; sometimes a substitute for a personality that is not there. There are times when it is imperative to know which is which. I think most
of us would have endorsed the views of Yates: in England it seemed to matter; now, seeing the group on the crest the old aura still clung, but it was diminished. The ‘