"A hundred years ago, on 15 September 1916, on the Western Front during the Battle of the Somme, the tank made its debut on the battlefield. The first tanks were crude, unreliable, vulnerable weapons, but they changed the charcater of land warfare forever, and [this] photographic history of these pioneering armoured vehicles is the ideal introduction to them. ... [He] offers a fascinating insight into the difficult early days of this innovative new weapon, descibing its technical history and its performance in combat. While the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 is often held up as the first large-scale tank battle, tanks had already served at Flers-Courcelette on the Somme, during the Nivelle offensive and the Battles of Messines and Passchendaele."--Back cover. |