Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-09-19
BLOOD AND LAUGHTER
SPREAD BY TANKS. "
LATEST WAR MARVEL
Allies Great Secret Revealed
in Armored Motor Cars That
Charge Like Dinosaurs of
Old

BRITISH FRONT IN FRANCE Sept.
16.-(Via London)-The wor kof the
new armored cars i'm cooperation with
! the British infantry i'm their charges in
yesterdays successful attack is the one
theme of the talk throughout the army
today.
1.-THE idea was so good when it was
offered" said staff officer, that we had
some built and the way they ahve gone
over the German trenches and have en-
fladed them with machine gun fire is
some return for the surprise the Ger
manas gave us with their gas attacks in
the first battle of Ypres."
Evidently the British were able to
keep the building of these cars secret
and the first that the Germans knew
of their construction were when in the
misty dawn yesterday they came rumb-
ling across shell craters and over tree
stumps, cutting down many small trees
on their way toward the German
trenches, on the second line and even
to the third line. The return to earth
of ichthyosaurs or DINOSAURS spoting
bullets from their nostrils could not
have been more amazing.
ranks is the SidnB "OIN thS aAAlJ
staff has applied to these strange Gre
atoms of machinery, but they look less
like tanks than anything else. IL is
hard to say what they look like. They
have been compared both to armidillos
and measuring worms and to many 9TH
er weird creeping or crawling objects
of natural history. A man of wars tur-
ret crossing fields, in and out of gulleys
and through fences, would present a
spectacle resembling their progress.
During the days preceding the attack,
as they moved up to the front and the
soldiers gazed at them, the disabilities
of all ranks were tickled. All sorts of
questions were propounded. Would the
thing stand when it was hitched and
what was it fed? Which was its tail
and which its head? At all events it
was a steel jointed incarnation of mill
tary secrecy.
Spectators laughed at ii, but with the
true British sporting instinct hoped it
would have sporting chance.
Last night wounded men back from
the line forgot their pain and what part
their battalion played during the battle
in telling what the tanks did. Notes
were compared between the actions of
our and your tank. Cooperating
with the infantry according to pre-ar-
rangement the grotesque creatures play
dthe part set for them under the con-
troll of their invisible crews, which were
their brain centers. Some soldiers said
their battalions HAD nothing more to do
than harvesters who gather sheaves, fol-
lowing a reaper and binder raked by fire.
British army reports never had
stranger passage than one saying that
100 Germans had surrendered TO "a
tank" unless it was the one~reporting
that the tank had been seen from an
acceptance making it's way through the
main streets fthe village of Flers fol-
lowed by cheering British soldiers.
staff officer spoke of one having stopped
to browse" at the edge of wood be-
fore continuing to advance.
1t is small wonder that anybody who
saw in action one of these armored mo-
tor cars should hold up his hands. They.
have brought a new element into the
grim. monotonous business of war,
trenches, shells'and bombs. 1t was the
tanks" day and the tank" made good.
According to reports, trenchfuls of
dead were left in it's wake when the oc-
cupants o trenches tried to hold their
ground and did not surrender or fly
from it's approach. Yet destructive as
the fire of the tanks was, many Ger
man prisoners began laughing when re-
calling the first glimpse of them.
The tanks" have added an element
of humor which put the army, through
all it's ranks. into a festive mood.