![]() ![]() Wells had fantasised in his science-fiction account of ‘The Land Ironclads’ in 1903 had become a reality, far diminished in size though. While it has rich professional lessons for modern-day tank men whose role and regimen in battle has not changed much in spite of their state-of-the-art tanks, for a general reader it is a revelation on tank warfare and the human cost of it.ġ5 September 1916, Somme, the Western Front, World War I British infantrymen awaiting call forward to attack the village of Flers and the German defenders opposing them, first heard an unearthly noise and then watched thunderstruck what generated it ‘a metal monolith that defied description’, which trundled across the trenches on tracks that revolved around a hull with revolving turrets affixed to it, ploughing up mud and barbed wire in its wake. The world would probably never again witness tank battles of the magnitude that raged on the Russian or North African fronts of World War II, but the book, in telling the story of those battles and the men who fought them, reveals a not-too well-known facet of warfare, which has few parallels in its brutality and heroism. The narrative is so lucid all throughout that I am sure even a complete stranger to tanks and armoured warfare would find it fascinating. So extensive is the research that tank men of almost every participant nation in the two World Wars appear in the book. As a tank man myself I almost felt part of each tank crew that occupy the pages and there are many of varying nationalities, French and British to German and Italian and American and Canadian to Russian and Australian and so on. Admittedly it is an old book, first published in UK in 2008 but having had the opportunity to read it only recently when a friend who is an armour warfare enthusiast loaned it to me, I was spellbound by the sheer brilliance of the work and the mastery with which the author has handled the topic.
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