page_title: Schneider CA1
section_title: Training
hierarchical_section_title: Schneider CA1 / Operational history / Training
caption_attribution_description: English: The French Army on the Western Front, 1914-1918 A Fench Schneider CA1 tank crossing a trench during training exercises at Marly-le-Roi, December 1916. Note the camouflage the tank is covered with.
context_page_description: The Schneider CA 1 was the first French tank, developed during the First World War.
  The Schneider was inspired by the need to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare which on the Western Front prevailed during most of the Great War. It was designed specifically to open passages for the infantry through barbed wire and then to suppress German machine gun nests. After a first concept by Jacques Quellennec devised in November 1914, the type was developed from May 1915 onwards by engineer Eugène Brillié, paralleling British development of tanks the same year. Colonel Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne in December 1915 began to urge for the formation of French armoured units, leading to an order in February 1916 for four hundred Schneider CA tanks, which were manufactured by SOMUA, a subsidiary of Schneider located in a suburb of Paris, between September 1916 and August 1918.
  Like most early tanks, the Schneider was built like a simple armoured box, without compartmentalisation of the inner space. It lacked a turret, with the main armament, a short 75 mm cannon, in a sponson on the right side. By later standards it would therefore have been an assault gun instead of a tank.
context_section_description: To deploy tanks, it was first needed to train crews and create tank units. On 14 July 1916 Estienne started to set up a training base at the Fort du Trou-d'Enfer, a fortress at Marly-le-Roi, west of Paris. For reasons of secrecy this location was officially attached to the 81st Heavy Artillery Regiment, a depot unit. On 15 August the camp was formally established and quickly filled with recruits, most of them young volunteers from various French armies.  At Marly the crews received their first instruction consisting of the basics of maintenance and a lot of driver training with an emphasis on crossing trenches, avoiding shell craters and running down trees and walls. Because no actual Schneider vehicles were available at first, Holt tractors were used instead; later boiler plate training chassis were employed with the superstructure removed and replaced by a protective wooden frame. From the spring of 1917 onwards about seven vehicles were used for this goal. For unit training and live fire exercises, which required much larger manoeuvre grounds, on 30 August 1916 a camp was established at Cercottes. It received its first training vehicles on 17 November 1916. To get better acquainted with the mechanical side of the tanks, most crew members left Cercottes for a month to work as a trainee at the SOMUA factory. New vehicles would normally be first delivered at Cercottes. In 1917 the Cercottes base grew to a strength of about five thousand men, many of them sent there from units trying to get rid of undesirable elements, forcing the base command to reduce manpower by again removing them. On 28 September 1916 a large instruction centre was established at Champlieu, south of Compiègne.  This location, close to the frontline and officially part of the warzone, could serve for final training and sending out battle-ready units to those armies needing them.  The tank workshops were also located there, repairing and updating existing vehicles. The bases at Cercottes and Champlieu used about sixty-four tanks purely for training purposes, to limit the wear on the combat vehicles.
caption: Training at Marly-le-Roi
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