Recently, as an ex-member of the Royal Tank Regiment, I had an inkling of what it must have felt like to have been a cavalryman in the mid-1930s when my horse was being replaced by one of these crude mechanical monsters.
Chieftain, 4 RTR A Squadron passes the Russian War memorial in Berlin.
The situation arose when reading a review by military writer Michael Howard in a recent Sunday Times, of the book "INSIGHT ON THE MIDDLE EAST WAR" (by the Insight Team of the Sunday Times, published by Andre Deutsch - 95P). His concluding paragraph read as follows:
"This book is thus essential reading for the student of crisis-management; but professional soldiers had better consult it as well. It is easy to make extravagant claims about the end of the era of armoured warfare, and equally easy to shrug them off. But only the most blinkered conservative will deny that the events of last October should force a radical re-examination of the role and capabilities of the tank in the age of the battlefield missile. They certainly showed that doctrines based on the experience of the Second World War are now, after thirty years, of very limited relevance indeed. Should we not now take the bull by the horns and instead of trying to prolong the life of the tank, cumbrous, vulnerable and expensive as it is, devote all our energies to eliminating it from the battlefield altogether? If a new Liddell-Hart could be found to undo the work of the first, the defence of Western Europe might appear a very much less hopeless proposition than it does to NATO strategists today."
Of course, on first reading it seemed like heresy but when an authoritive military critic makes such a sweeping statement, then it must receive consideration. Personally, I find it difficult to conceive modern warfare without a tank or some other equivalent military artifact that will take some of the physical strain from the soldiers' soft and vulnerable human body - just as the tank did in World War I.
On the subject of tanks, I feel privileged to be permitted to reproduce in these pages a two part article taken direct from THE TANK - The Journal of the Royal Tank Regiment. It takes the form of an interview between Sgt. K. Chadwick R.T.R. and the late Sir Basil Liddell-Hart on the history and evolution of the armoured fighting vehicle. These two articles seemed to me to be of such value and interest that I obtained permission from the Editor of my Regimental magazine to reproduce them in these pages.
Incidentally, wargamers, particularly those in the modern field, are recommended to consider taking out a subscription to this magazine. A well printed and illustrated journal, it costs but a mere £ 1.00p per year post free for twelve copies! It is obtainable from The Editorial Office, "The Tank", Royal Tank Regiment Publications Ltd, Regimental Headquarters, Royal Tank Regiment, I Elverton Street, London SW1. Major B.H.S.Clarke, the Editor, writes that he will be delighted to receive fresh subscribers but "...I will have to be a little careful about who I allow to subscribe to "The Tank" as there are certain security restrictions. I have to satisfy myself that people have some bona fide interest in the R.T.R. and do not live in Moscow or Peking! However, I will worry about that later."
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© Copyright 1974 by Donald Featherstone.
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