Lewis war diary, August 1917-March 1919 / James Ray Lewis - Page 115
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[Page 115]
blank cartridges, dummy Lewis guns, and last but not least a plentiful supply of smoke bombs. At big shell holes they pretended there was an enemy machine gun and fired a smoke bomb into it, whereupon the tank went and tramped over the shellhole. Oh! they did it in fine style, there wern't any bullets whizzing.
There was a German tank here captured by the 26th Batt in front of Monument wood. Monument wood was about a ½ a kilo from our outpost at Villers Brettoneux and is so named from an obelisk of some description that stood in it. The wood was a very small one, and I never was close to it to see the obelisk closely as it was in Fritz's line it looked like a big stonehenge stone about 6 feet high and 4 feet broad.
The Tank was a great heavily armoured affair weighing about 30 tons. Our tanks are not armoured. It was intended evidently to waddle over to the enemy trenches, stay there, and act as a land fort. I don't think Fritz ever really had any faith in them. On the side was a picture of the devil with a British tank under his arm the tank being called Mephisto or Teufel I forget which. There were grooves in the armour where bullets had glanced off. The armour covering was nearly an inch thick.