A British soldier and historian, Ernest Swinton is credited with inventing the tank.  Having served in the trenches he went home on leave at Christmas 1914. He was dwelling on the problem of getting his men over trenches and through barbed wire when he saw from a train window a Holt tractor towing a gun over rough ground. It is not generally remembered nowadays that the Holt tractor was American and had caterpillar tracks. They got the idea from an Englishman, Daniel Allbone who had patented the idea but who could not find a developer in England. Swinton put the two things together in his mind and spent his leave composing a paper which proposed a “power driven, bullet proof, armed engine capable of destroying machine guns, breaking through entanglements and climbing earthworks”.  Eventually the paper reached Winston Churchill's desk. Churchill set up the Admiralty Landships Committee which 18 months later resulted in the Tank.  There was much opposition from the Army and Politicians who thought mechanisation was not the answer, but eventually Earl Haig called for 60 to be made and shipped to the war zone.  This, of course, was the Mark 1 version which was hardly tested and prone to mechanical failure.  Of 49 and only 32 got to their start positions. Of those 9 broke down during the battle and 5 were soon stuck in craters.   The remaining 18 effective tanks were a great help to the infantry and some ground was gained on 15thSeptember.

My uncle Reg had been selected some months before in September 1916 for a temporary commission in the East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) and went as 2ndLieutenant Liles in conditions of high security for training with the new Tanks.  So Uncle Reg was there in the thick of it on 15th September 1916 when the Somme Battle commenced in earnest.  Then or in the coming months he earned the Military Cross and the London Gazette recorded on 18thMarch 2017: “T/Sec Lieut R W Liles, E.Kent R  - when the tank in front of him received a direct hit, causing several casualties, this officer immediately ran to it and, though ammunition was exploding, entered the tank, dragged out the wounded and had them evacuated to the dressing station.  On another occasion he remained in the open during several heavy barrages, encouraging tank crews, previous to which he had led up the tanks to the starting point under very heavy shell fire. He showed a total disregard for his person safety.  -   2ndLieut. Liles is the son of WH Liles of 40 York Place, Newport.”

The Mark 1 tank was 14 ft long. 7'6” in height and weighed 28 tons when fully equipped and loaded.  It carried a crew of one officer and seven other ranks and was armed with two naval 6 pounders and a Hotchkiss machine gun.  They were incredibly hard to manoeuvre, moved at walking pace and the conditions inside were diabolical.   The temperature often exceeded 100 deg Fahrenheit  and the air was laden with petrol fumes and carbon monoxide. The tracks were unsprung and the ride rough; the crew were often thrown against the hot engine and the noise, especially in battle, was in itself very stressful.

Uncle Reg was injured in battle during September 1917 but continued to served in these tanks for another  years until the end of the war in November 1918.  During this period there was a moment of serendipity when he had the good fortune to stop at a small cafe in the Pas de Calais where was was served by a rather striking looking young lady, Yvonne whom he subsequently married in 1919 and brought to England.  But she had a very sad tale to tell.

 

Moving forward to 1939, Yvonne went to her family in France to persuade them to leave for England when France was invaded. Unfortunately the invaders closed the borders while she was there and she could not come home  - mind she did seem French being French of birth and of nature. In 1940 she joined the Resistance and helped British soldiers who'd been shot down or who escaped captivity by hiding them and feeding them until they could creep a few miles to the Channel.  Some months later some torn paper in the woods were traceable to her and she was accused of assisting the enemy.  She taken arrested on 20thAugust 1940 and was questioned until 10thSeptember when she was transferred to Lille. There follows four horrendous years of absolute misery during which she was in a band of 3,000 women who were marched across France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania to many difference concentration camps. I believe only a hundred or so survived out of the 3,000 prisoners of war.  During this time the few permitted letters from prisoner to family and vice versa became lost in the moves and the family heard nothing for years.  I think she was found by the Russians and the survivors made their way through Krakow, Lvov, Chernovsty to the Black Sea port of Odessa where she boarded a vessel for Glasgow. She landed without a penny but was speedily reunited with her family and soon married Uncle Reg.

Four years later the poor man committed suicide in 1922. The family think it was post traumatic stress disorder but we'll never know as even his daughter Mimi was never told he took his own life.  This left his young widow Yvonne in Newport who lived with my mother and father in her bereavement.  My mother brought up Mimi who was five years older than Josephine. They has a 'sisterly' bond all their lives.
We all remember Yvonne as an excitable foreigner!  Indeed, when I was 16 and on my first solo trip to London I remember being in the London house where Yvonne was housekeeper. Thunder and lightening came and she shot off to get a bottle of Holy Water and sprinkled it on me, the mantlepiece, the soft furnishings and her crucifix which was nailed to the wall.

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