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Show ilDEBFULJIND 111 ME THE BED US lish Soldiers Laugh at ''ueer-Iooking Machines as They Are Taken to the Front. t 1 UGH AGAIN WHEN THE FIGHT IS OVER ;cription of New Engine f War Impossible, but he Germans Surrender When They See One. JTISH FRONT IN FRANCE, 16. via London, 3:15 p. m. The . of the new armored cars in co-;rioa co-;rioa with the British infantry in charges in yesterday's successful k i3 the one theme of the talk .ghout the army today. The idea was so good when it was -A," said a staff officer, "that we some built, and the way they have over the German trenches and have iled them with machine gun fire return for the surprise the Ger-; Ger-; gave us with their gas attacks in :attle of Ypres." : idently the British were able to the building of these cars entirely i, and the first that the Germans t of their existence was when, in listy dawn yesterday morning they -thundering across shell craters and tree stumps, cutting down many i trees on their way toward the j&n trenches, on to the second line, 'even to the third line. The return arth of the ichthyosaurus or dino-- dino-- spouting bullets from their nos-. nos-. could not have been more amaz- :ficult to Describe. Tanks" is the slang word the army : has applied to these strange crea-! crea-! of machinery, but they look less tanks than anything in the world. i hard to say what they look like, have been compared both to arma-jr arma-jr "and measuring worms and to maay f weird creeping or crawling objects -Jtoral history. A man-of-war's tur-1 tur-1 noting fields, in and out of gul-: gul-: uid through fences, would present :aftade resembling their progress, ring the days preceding the attack, '-sy moved up to the front and the Ts gazed at them, the risibilities 1 ranks were tickled." All sorts of J ' ions were propounded. Would the : stand when it was hitched and f was it fed ? Which was its tail which its head? At all eventB, it j a steel-jointed incarnation of mili- tary secrecy. Spectators laughed at it, but with the true British sporting instinct, in-stinct, hoped it would at least have a sporting chance. Wounded Forget Their Pain. Last night wounded men back from the line forgot their pain and what part their battalion Mayed during the batWc in telling what the "tanks" did. Notes were compared between the actions of "our" and "your" tank. Co-operating with the infantry action to prear-rangement, prear-rangement, the grotesoue creatures plavcd the part set for them under the control of their invisible crews, which were their brain centers. Some soldiers said their battalions hud nothing more to do than harvesters who gather sheaves, following a reaper and binder raked with fire. British army reports ncx had a stronger passage than one saying that 100 Germans had surrendered to a "tank," unless it was the one reporting report-ing that the tank had been seen from nu aeroplane making its way through the main streets of the village of Flers, followed fol-lowed by cheering British soldiers. A staff officer spoke of one having stopped to ' ' browse ' ' at the edge ot a wood before continuing to advance. Element of Humor. It is smaller wonder that anybody who saw in action one of the armored motor cars if car bo an allowable name should hold up his hands. They have brought a new element into the grim, monotonous business of war, trenches, shells and bombs. It was the tanks' day and the tank made good. According to reports, trenches full of dead were left in its wake, when the occupants of trenches tried to hold their ground nnd did not surrender or fy from its approach Yet, destructive as the fire of the tanks was, many German prisoners began laughing when recalling the first glimpse of them, while the British, as a result, of the fact that these grotesque comrades went into the charge, are laughing and rejoicing over the day's victory. The tanks have added add-ed an element of humor which put the army, through all its ranks, into a festive fes-tive mond. |