Sir B L-H 'Q' Martell was in the tanks almost from the beginning. In fact, as a Captain he was sent by GHQ in France to turn the 'Elvedon Explosives Area' into an imitation trench front and it was he who designed the practice battlefield where the first tank units did their training in secret. When klugh Elles took up his appointment as commander of the tanks in the field Capt G Le Q Martel was chosen to be the first Brigade Major of the new tank units in October 1916. In November 1916, while dealing with immediate problems and preparations for the spring offensive, Martel had written a paper A Tank Army, which was an astonishingly futuristic essay. His paper suggested how tank armies would be organized, and was manifestly inspired by the completion of the tank as a landship, viewing its operations as an application of sea warfare on land. The extent to which Martel overshot the mark of potentiality was, in fact, less than that by which most military thinking fell short of it. About the middle of March 1916 Martel was sent up to the front with representatives from the battalions and companies and lived with them during the preparatory period of the offensive. One of Martel's ideas which had been mooted in his paper A Tank Army, came to fruition in June 1917, when supply tanks were first used in the Bartel of Messines. At Cambrai, as a Staff Officer from Tank Corps HQ, during the advance on Masieries, Martel took charge of a tank drive on the canal crossing. After having advanced on foot with the tanks Martel eventually gave the order to the leading tank to cross the bridge. The tank advanced but the near end of the bridge collapsed under its weight, falling into the canal along with the tank, whose crew escaped, covered by the cloud of steam that arose. KC After the war, didn't he return to duty with his own Corps, the Royal Engineers? Sir B L-H Yes, but he continued to take a very active interest in the development of tanks and the survival and eventual revival of the tracked vehicle, outside the restricted limits of the RTC, owed much to the Midget tank, or 'tankette' which Martel brought into being in 1925. With greater realism than most men of imagination he reconciled himself to the fact that economy of finance is the ruling principle of Governments in maintaining their forces in peace time. So Martel set out to build the tank. Between February and August 1925 he built the 'one-mantank' at his house on the outskirts of Camberley. The one costly item was the tracks, as they had to be specially made. Even so, his out-of-pocket expenses came only to &$163 400. Although the War Office ordered four properly finished machines, the effect of his demonstration was not as decisive as he had hoped-, the type of machine he introduced paved the way for the ultimate general mechanisation of the Army, and for the expansion of the tank arm. After reading an account of Martel's machine in The Daily Telegraph, Mr John Carden who was running a big London garage owned by a Mr Loyd asked to be allowed to submit alternative models of his own design. His offer was accepted; eight of his models (the Carden-Loyd Mark IV) were ordered with eight Morris-Martels and together provided the scout machines for the Experimental Mechanised Force which was formed in 1927. Martel commanded the motorised field company of the Engineers in the force when the collective training of the Mechanised Force began on August 19, 1927. Writing in the Telegraph I emphasised in my article that the Force offered all too easy a target and suggested that instead of moving closed up in a colurrin it would be better for vehicles to move independently and as fast as possible. There would have been no fast-moving tanks, for mobile operations available by 1940 but for Martel's insistence and persistence after his visit to Russia in September, 1934. When his proposal to buy a Russian Christie-type tank was turned down, he managed to obtain one of the original patterns from the American inventor, J W Christie. In America, the tank had been turned down by the US authorities and Christie only had one model available. Morris Motors managed to obtain it for £ 8,000. To get round the obstacle of not having an export licence for new material, the tank-hull was shipped as a 'tractor' and the other parts were labelled 'grapefruit'. KC When the last war started and the Blitzkrieg proved the effectiveness of all the theories formulated during the life of the Royal Tank Corps, wasn't it Rommel's forces who broke through near Cambrai? Sir B L-H Yes. In retrospect, the Royal Tank Regiment's new tactical and strategical concepts were amply vindicated - although by the eneemy in the first place. After Rommel's break-through on May 19, 1940, Major-General G Le Q Martel's 50th Division had to take over from the French. Martel formed his small force into two mixed columnseach comprising a tank battalion, an infantry battalion, a field battery, and anti-tank battery, and a machine-gun company. A counter-attack was made which achieved a striking effect in delaying the onrush of the German force. In December, 1940, Martel assumed the appointment of 'Commander of the Royal Armoured Corps', eventually, in September, 1942, while he was in India and Burma on a five months' tour of RAC units, he found that his post had been abolished. More Liddell-Hart Interview Prologue Why Call It a "Tank" and not a "Landship?" Ernest Swinton and the Development of the Tank Lt-Gen Sir G le Q Martel Major-General Sir Hugh J. Elles Lieutenant General Sir Charles Broad, KCB, DSO Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter #146 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1974 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com