There were some Germans in the dugouts and I shall never forget the looks on their faces when they emerged and saw my tank.’Īfter this initial success, Daredevil was hit by artillery fire and knocked out. ‘I managed to get astride one of the German trenches in front of the wood and opened fire. Mortimore was tasked to attack enemy strongpoints at Delville Wood and then provide support for the assault on the village of Flers. I’d been very frightened indeed, both before and after the day, but on that particular morning the whole thing seemed unreal, besides which we all had the utmost confidence in our new weapon - the tank.’
‘Looking back on it, I don’t think I was frightened. Like other recruits to the new tank unit, he was entering a complete unknown. Mortimore, known as ‘Morty’, was 23 years old when he commanded his Mark I tank at the Battle of Flers Courcelette.
This was the first tank in history to see action on a battlefield. on 15th September 1916, Lieutenant Harold Mortimore led his tank Daredevil across No Man’s Land.
However, in March 1917, the Germans made a strategic retreat to the Hindenburg line rather than face the resumption of the Battle of the Somme.At 5:15 a.m. At the end of hostilities the British had advanced just seven miles and failed to break the German defence. Fighting was finally suspended after 141 days, as winter was closing in and British commander Gen Douglas Haig decided the offensive should be resumed in February. However, the French had more success and inflicted big losses on German troops. On the first day of the battle alone 19,240 British soldiers were killed capturing just three square miles of territory - the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. In total, there were over one million dead and wounded on all sides, including 420,000 British casualties, about 200,000 from France, and an estimated 465,000 from Germany. The aim was to relieve the French army fighting at Verdun and to weaken the German army. For more than four months the British and French armies engaged the Germans in a brutal battle of attrition on a 15-mile front. One of the bloodiest conflicts of World War One.
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