Basket (0) Join Member Login Admin Login
About The WFA
World War I Book Reviews
Pension Records
Stand To!
The Camera Returns No.56 by Steve Wall and Bob Grundy
World War I Articles
FILM REVIEW : All Quiet on the Western Front
Forever Friends: Laurie Denison and Clifford Thompson
McCudden meets the Red Baron
Every man for himself: The Loss of HMS Formidable 1 January 1915
The Cotton-Mill Worker, the Stockbroker and the Flammenwerfer: The 8th Battalion Rifle Brigade at Hooge
Lanoe Hawker, VC: Pilot, Innovator and Inventor
Away from the Front Line – Poperinge, La Poupée and Talbot House
First World War Materials for University Students
Leeds Pals Memorial
The British Monarchy and the First World War by Professor Heather Jones
Brothers killed in action together
The Envelope in the Attic : Items pertaining to Private Arthur W. Holtby of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
Boy Soldiers of the Great War Revisited by Richard van Emden
Hang on a Minute! Near escapes by RFC/RAF Pilots during the First World War
The 'Dead Enigma': Hedd Wyn and Francis Ledwidge and the Welsh National Eisteddfod
Manchesters
Tameside Local Studies & Archive Centre
Steve Wall
Bob Grundy
The Camera Returns
Stand To Article
This item first appeared in Stand To! No. 74 September 2005 p.54. All these articles can be enjoyed by WFA Members using their Member Login and then browsing the entire Stand To! Archive of 116 publication.
Taken on a clear October morning in 1918, this fairly well-known photograph, IWM Q7111, [Top Image of Two] shows men of the 20th Bn, Manchester Regiment, resting beside a tank which had been disabled after 'slipping down a railway embankment' near the village of Premont. The Manchesters were part of the 25th Division, Fourth Army, which operated in the area with the 30th American Division.
We were able to obtain extracts from the Manchesters' Regimental History from Michael Keane of Tameside Local Studies & Archive Centre; strangely, the History did not mention Premont in its account of the fighting on 8 October, the day the photograph was taken. It does, however, mention the tank, a Mark V* female, which was a 'stretched' version of the Mark V, and A Coy which successfully attacked Foal Copse and the adjacent area of scrub. The History tells us that 'meanwhile the fire from the scrub did not diminish, so the services of a tank were requisitioned and the spot effectively cleared during the morning'.
We discovered that Q7111 was taken 1 ½ miles west of Premont at the junction of an unmarked track and the D932 road from Le Cateau. The photographer is looking back along the track towards Premont which can be seen on the horizon in both photographs. If one studies the photograph with a magnifying glass, it is possible to identify two Lewis guns, a sergeant with a cigarette in his mouth, a corporal and two lance corporals. The white painted device on top of the tank is part of a semaphore signalling apparatus and the number 9891 is the tank's individual number, given to it when it was built. The column of troops in the background is almost certainly elements of the First Cavalry Division; they also feature in another photograph taken within 200 yards of this one on the same day.
IMAGES: Battle of Cambrai. Men of the 20th Battalion, Manchester Regiment (25th Division) resting by a tank (serial number 9891), disabled by side-slipping down a railway embankment. Near Premont, 8 October 1918. (C) IWM Q 7111 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205238960 Google. D932 Premont, Hautes-de-France.
The Western Front Association (The WFA) was formed with the purpose of furthering interest in First World War of 1914-1918. We also aim to perpetuate the memory, courage and comradeship of all those who served their countries on all sides, across all theatres and fronts, on land, at sea and in the air and at home, during the Great War.
BM Box 1914,
WC1N 3XX,
United Kingdom +44 (0)207 118 1914 membership@westernfrontassociation.com
Tweets by @TheWFA
Subscribe to our email newsletter to receive The WFA's newsletter "Trenchlines"
I consent to The Western Front Association and its branches to contact me by email.
© Copyright 2023, All Rights Reserved. The Western Front Association is a registered charity in the United Kingdom, no 298365. BM BOX 1914, London, WC1N 3XX.
Please select your address from the list below;
Select Address
No results found, please manually enter your address.
Bank Validation
Please enter your sortcode and account number below. We will check that your account details are correct and that your bank account will allow direct debits.
Sortcode e.g. 00-11-22
Validate Bank Details Continue
Thank you, your item has been added to the basket. Please select an option below to continue.