Ernest Dunlop Swinton Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton , KBE , CB , DSO , RE ( 21 October 1868 – 15 January 1951 ) was a military writer and British Army officer . Swinton is credited with influencing the development and adoption of the tank by the British during the First World War . He is also known for popularising the term " no - mans land " . He published several books of non - fiction and fiction including two books under the pseudonym O ' le Luk - Oie . Early life and career . Swinton was born in Bangalore , India in 1868 , his father worked for the Madras Civil Service . He was educated at University College School , Rugby School , Cheltenham College , Blackheath Proprietary School and the Royal Military Academy , Woolwich . He became an officer in the Corps of Royal Engineers in 1888 , serving in India and becoming Lieutenant in 1891 . He served as a Captain during the Second Boer War ( 1899 - 1901 ) , and received the Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ) in November 1900 . After the war , he wrote his book on small unit tactics , The Defence of Duffer ' s Drift , a military classic on minor tactics that has been used by the Canadian and British Armies to train their NCOs and officers and US military to train its officers . In the years leading up to the First World War , he served as a staff officer and as an official historian of the Russo - Japanese War . First World War . The War Minister , Lord Kitchener appointed Swinton as the official British war correspondent on the Western Front . Journalists were not allowed at the front and Swinton ' s reports were censored leading to an effectively uncontroversial although even - handed reporting . Development of tanks . Swinton recounts in his book " Eyewitness " how he first got the sudden idea to build a tank on 19 October 1914 , while driving a car in France . It is known that in July 1914 he received a letter from a friend , the South African engineer Hugh Merriot , asking that he attend to the possibility that armoured tractors might be very useful in warfare . In Britain , David Roberts of Richard Hornsby & Sons had attempted starting in 1911 to interest British military officials in a tracked vehicle , but failed . Benjamin Holt of the Holt Manufacturing Company bought the patents related to the " chain track " track - type tractor from Richard Hornsby & Sons in 1914 for £4 , 000 . When World War I broke out , with the problem of trench warfare and the difficulty of transporting supplies to the front , the pulling power of crawling - type tractors drew the attention of the military . The British War Office ordered a Holt tractor and put it through trials at Aldershot . Although it was not as powerful as the Foster - Daimler tractor , the Holt was better suited to haul heavy loads over uneven ground . Without a load , the Holt tractor managed a walking pace of . Towing a load , it could only manage . Most importantly , Holt tractors were readily available in quantity . The War Office was suitably impressed and chose it as a gun - tractor . Major Swinton , sent to France as an army war correspondent , very soon saw the Holt artillery tractor s in use and their potential for other uses . In November 1914 Swinton suggested to Sir Maurice Hankey , Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence , that the British build a power - driven , bullet - proof , tracked vehicle that could destroy enemy guns . The idea was initially ignored until Winston Churchill , First Lord of the Admiralty , learned of it . This led to the formation of the Landships Committee , although Swinton did not initially participate . The War Office discarded Swinton ' s original proposal to use Holt company tractors , and instead chose to use a British firm , Foster and Sons , whose managing director and designer was Sir William Tritton . In the same year he prepared from his own resources a propaganda leaflet and had it dropped from aircraft over German troops . In 1916 Swinton was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and given responsibility for training the first tank units . He created the first tactical instructions for armoured warfare . The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors decided after the war that the inventors of the tank were Sir William Tritton , managing director of Fosters and Major Walter Gordon Wilson . By 1918 , the War Office had received 2 , 100 Holt tractors . Post - war . In 1919 Swinton retired as a Major General . He subsequently served in the Civil Aviation department at the Air Ministry . He thereafter joined Citroën in 1922 as a director . He was Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College , Oxford from 1925 to 1939 ; he was also Colonel Commandant of the Royal Tank Corps from 1934 to 1938 . In 1938 , he edited " Twenty Years After : the Battlefields of 1914 - 18 : then and Now " a publication of George Newnes Limited which was planned for issue in 20 parts and which ultimately amounted to 42 . The magazine - style publication contained wartime and present - day ( ca . 1938 ) images of France . Family life . Swinton married Grace Louise Clayton in 1897 and they had two sons and a daughter , his daughter died in a road accident during the Second World War . Swinton died in Oxford on 15 January 1951 .