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Band of Brigands: The First Men in Tanks
Inspired by a visit to northeast France to witness the excavation of a remarkably intact World War I tank from beneath a suburban vegetable plot near the town of Cambrai, Christy Campbell—then defense correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph —began to piece together the little-known story of the young men who formed the British Tank Corps. Very few of them had been professional soldiers; they were car enthusiasts and mechanics, plumbers, motorcyclists, circus performers, and polar explorers. One officer declared "I have never seen such a band of brigands in my life." They had trained in conditions of great secrecy in the grounds of a stately home in East Anglia and were originally known as the Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps. The word "tank" itself was deliberately chosen to mislead. Men in tanks saw the face of battle at its most brutal. Their task was to crush and burn the enemy out of his fortifications, and to carve a path for the infantry so they could finish the job with bayonet and grenade. Captured tank crews were beaten up or sometimes shot out of hand by the Germans. They fought in their stifling armored boxes packed with gas and explosives, aware that at any moment a shell-hit might incinerate them all. Christy Campbell has combed contemporary diaries and letters and later recollections to tell properly for the first time the robust yet harrowing story of how the first men in tanks went to war. The time frame is 1916-18, with a coda on how German blitzkrieg ideas developed from an English root.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 31, 2014
Having once myself had the dubious privilege of experiencing army service from the testing confines of a late 20th century main battle tank, I was curious to read this fairly recent account of the very first tanks and the original tank men. This was also my first related read in this centenary year of the First World War's outbreak.
Our story begins in earnest towards the war's middle - by early 1915 the Western Front's trench-bound stalemate had well and truly stuck. The largely defensive strategy of the Germans in the west, designed to stifle the all-too-predictable and largely ineffective Allied tactics of prolonged artillery bombardment followed by 'surprise' infantry attacks; while they laboured at knocking out the poorly-led and poorly motivated Russians in the east, seemed to have held sway.
This book tells the story of how the tank was first conceived and eventually designed and built, before being thrown into the quagmire. The reader learns something of the personalities, and considerable failings, of those 'in charge' of Britain's war effort, and the earlier chapters covering all the various military-political machinations and inter-departmental and inter-service rivalries are surprisingly intriguing, and almost thriller-like in places. Campbell's writing is good. The impressive level of research in his subject is evident, and there are some fascinating portraits of the various characters in the vanguard of this new branch of the Army. With the tanks' early reputation for unreliability, and the men having something of the 'unwanted' about them, and for having no discipline and no regard for the "traditions of war" - the put-out old guard and the Cavalry officer types (by late 1914 largely redundant) were pretty disdaining of the 'Machine Gun Corps - Heavy Branch' that the tanks belonged to.
"That was the officers. Then there were the men. On his first day after arriving, Maj. Fuller got a shock. He took an early morning drive around the Heavy Branch area and its outlying villages where the men were billeted alongside the locals. Pigs grunted as bleary figures in khaki emerged from tumbledown cottages. 'Boney' Fuller drew his own stark conclusion. He wrote in his memoirs: 'I had never seen such a band of brigands in all my life.'"
The whole concept is repeatedly under the threat of being either abandoned, or poorly implemented by the uniformed buffoons dithering around HQ squabbling about who's in charge (the tanks were not yet under their own command, but at the whim of the infantry generals sending regiments of men over the top through the machine guns to the barbed wire). In the beginning nobody wanted to know about the noisy smelly beasts. Then everybody wants to know and be "seen" taking a joyride around Lord Whatshisname's country pile near London, where the prototypes are "put through their paces" in the grounds of a delicately landscaped estate - supposedly standing in for a Western Front no-mans-land!! Some are thinking that this could be the weapon to change the course of the war. Others are trying desperately to keep it all secret, before the Germans find out and make their own version - bigger and better.
Tank factory workers gossip, journalists speculate wildly, prisoners-of-war talk, one MP (Liberal) even blabbs about the latest developments with "moving forts on caterpillars" during session in Parliament! It's a wonder that anybody was surprised by them when they did finally enter the fray in Flanders.
The new super-weapon makes its debut somewhat belatedly about six weeks into the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The results were mainly confusing - a very mixed performance. All along, the pioneers had argued (along with Churchill) that to be effective they had to be thrown in en masse, and not just dribbled in here and there in small numbers. But almost a whole battle's worth behind schedule, C-in-C Field Marshall Haig can resist waiting for the machines in number no longer, and does exactly that. The factory fresh machines and the far-from-ready Tank Corps is thrown in by twos and threes. The 8-men crews suffer an appallingly high casualty rate - often either asphyxiating on engine or ammo fumes or burning to death in rhombus-shaped pyres of ammunition. Yet by the grotesque scale of Western Front body counts the tank men actually have a comparatively decent chance of not being blown to pieces compared with the poor infantry.
Churchill is one of the biggest advocates of tank development, helping from his cabinet seat running the Navy. But after Gallipoli in 1915 he is almost persona-non-grata in government, and his influence wanes. I knew Churchill was an all-out man of action and had seen active service in the British Army's late 19th century Imperial campaigns, had also been a war correspondent, and had been a very "hands-on" Home Secretary at the time of the miners striking and the violent Sydney Street Siege in 1910-11; but I had no idea that he actually returned to the Army after the Gallipoli disaster. He wintered on the Western Front as a battalion commander (Colonel), and then was invited back to Lloyd-George's War Coalition later during 1916.
Among the first officers to really understand the strategic potential of tanks though was the above mentioned Major JFC 'Boney' Fuller (Boney for his somewhat Napoleonic traits...). An interesting character, probably eccentric and possibly a bit mad, he became one of the chief early exponents of tank warfare and would go on to write an instructional manual which would ironically be of major influence to the German commanders of 'blitzkrieg warfare' in 1939-40. (Fuller would after his army retirement in 1933 go on to become a leading figure in Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Present at one Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday army parade in Berlin, April 1939, after 3 hours of tanks rumbling past, a positively genial Fuhrer asked, "I hope you were pleased with your children?" Fuller replied, "Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them.").
After the United States' (late...) entry into the war, we glimpse a cameo appearance of a Captain George S Patton of the US Cavalry. An early enthusiast for tank potential he sets up the US Light Tank school in France.
"He liked the little Renault because it 'bucked and reared like a horse'."
But it was at Cambrai late in 1917 that the tanks finally made a genuinely significant impact, when used en masse as the pioneers had always advised. Major 'Boney' Fuller among the chief architects of the successful breakthrough. This being the First World War though, the German losses were in the main rapidly recovered, but there had been a sea change in thinking at last. With the Bolsheviks removing Russia from the war, the German generals knew they didn't have long to throw everything at the west before the full impact of the USA's entry to the mess could force them back to a defeat.
Although not intended as defensive weapons, the tanks would play a part in helping to halt the German advance that almost broke through to Paris in early 1918, before joining the Allies' charge back towards the German border and the eventual Armistice with German capitulation. Band of Brigands was an interesting read and recommended for anyone interested in armoured warfare or the history of the First World War. It's also a fascinating look behind the scenes at the workings in the corridors of power and HQ offices of the British Army of this era. Too many typos and only so-so maps drops my rating by half a star.
Our story begins in earnest towards the war's middle - by early 1915 the Western Front's trench-bound stalemate had well and truly stuck. The largely defensive strategy of the Germans in the west, designed to stifle the all-too-predictable and largely ineffective Allied tactics of prolonged artillery bombardment followed by 'surprise' infantry attacks; while they laboured at knocking out the poorly-led and poorly motivated Russians in the east, seemed to have held sway.
This book tells the story of how the tank was first conceived and eventually designed and built, before being thrown into the quagmire. The reader learns something of the personalities, and considerable failings, of those 'in charge' of Britain's war effort, and the earlier chapters covering all the various military-political machinations and inter-departmental and inter-service rivalries are surprisingly intriguing, and almost thriller-like in places. Campbell's writing is good. The impressive level of research in his subject is evident, and there are some fascinating portraits of the various characters in the vanguard of this new branch of the Army. With the tanks' early reputation for unreliability, and the men having something of the 'unwanted' about them, and for having no discipline and no regard for the "traditions of war" - the put-out old guard and the Cavalry officer types (by late 1914 largely redundant) were pretty disdaining of the 'Machine Gun Corps - Heavy Branch' that the tanks belonged to.
"That was the officers. Then there were the men. On his first day after arriving, Maj. Fuller got a shock. He took an early morning drive around the Heavy Branch area and its outlying villages where the men were billeted alongside the locals. Pigs grunted as bleary figures in khaki emerged from tumbledown cottages. 'Boney' Fuller drew his own stark conclusion. He wrote in his memoirs: 'I had never seen such a band of brigands in all my life.'"
The whole concept is repeatedly under the threat of being either abandoned, or poorly implemented by the uniformed buffoons dithering around HQ squabbling about who's in charge (the tanks were not yet under their own command, but at the whim of the infantry generals sending regiments of men over the top through the machine guns to the barbed wire). In the beginning nobody wanted to know about the noisy smelly beasts. Then everybody wants to know and be "seen" taking a joyride around Lord Whatshisname's country pile near London, where the prototypes are "put through their paces" in the grounds of a delicately landscaped estate - supposedly standing in for a Western Front no-mans-land!! Some are thinking that this could be the weapon to change the course of the war. Others are trying desperately to keep it all secret, before the Germans find out and make their own version - bigger and better.
Tank factory workers gossip, journalists speculate wildly, prisoners-of-war talk, one MP (Liberal) even blabbs about the latest developments with "moving forts on caterpillars" during session in Parliament! It's a wonder that anybody was surprised by them when they did finally enter the fray in Flanders.
The new super-weapon makes its debut somewhat belatedly about six weeks into the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The results were mainly confusing - a very mixed performance. All along, the pioneers had argued (along with Churchill) that to be effective they had to be thrown in en masse, and not just dribbled in here and there in small numbers. But almost a whole battle's worth behind schedule, C-in-C Field Marshall Haig can resist waiting for the machines in number no longer, and does exactly that. The factory fresh machines and the far-from-ready Tank Corps is thrown in by twos and threes. The 8-men crews suffer an appallingly high casualty rate - often either asphyxiating on engine or ammo fumes or burning to death in rhombus-shaped pyres of ammunition. Yet by the grotesque scale of Western Front body counts the tank men actually have a comparatively decent chance of not being blown to pieces compared with the poor infantry.
Churchill is one of the biggest advocates of tank development, helping from his cabinet seat running the Navy. But after Gallipoli in 1915 he is almost persona-non-grata in government, and his influence wanes. I knew Churchill was an all-out man of action and had seen active service in the British Army's late 19th century Imperial campaigns, had also been a war correspondent, and had been a very "hands-on" Home Secretary at the time of the miners striking and the violent Sydney Street Siege in 1910-11; but I had no idea that he actually returned to the Army after the Gallipoli disaster. He wintered on the Western Front as a battalion commander (Colonel), and then was invited back to Lloyd-George's War Coalition later during 1916.
Among the first officers to really understand the strategic potential of tanks though was the above mentioned Major JFC 'Boney' Fuller (Boney for his somewhat Napoleonic traits...). An interesting character, probably eccentric and possibly a bit mad, he became one of the chief early exponents of tank warfare and would go on to write an instructional manual which would ironically be of major influence to the German commanders of 'blitzkrieg warfare' in 1939-40. (Fuller would after his army retirement in 1933 go on to become a leading figure in Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Present at one Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday army parade in Berlin, April 1939, after 3 hours of tanks rumbling past, a positively genial Fuhrer asked, "I hope you were pleased with your children?" Fuller replied, "Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them.").
After the United States' (late...) entry into the war, we glimpse a cameo appearance of a Captain George S Patton of the US Cavalry. An early enthusiast for tank potential he sets up the US Light Tank school in France.
"He liked the little Renault because it 'bucked and reared like a horse'."
But it was at Cambrai late in 1917 that the tanks finally made a genuinely significant impact, when used en masse as the pioneers had always advised. Major 'Boney' Fuller among the chief architects of the successful breakthrough. This being the First World War though, the German losses were in the main rapidly recovered, but there had been a sea change in thinking at last. With the Bolsheviks removing Russia from the war, the German generals knew they didn't have long to throw everything at the west before the full impact of the USA's entry to the mess could force them back to a defeat.
Although not intended as defensive weapons, the tanks would play a part in helping to halt the German advance that almost broke through to Paris in early 1918, before joining the Allies' charge back towards the German border and the eventual Armistice with German capitulation. Band of Brigands was an interesting read and recommended for anyone interested in armoured warfare or the history of the First World War. It's also a fascinating look behind the scenes at the workings in the corridors of power and HQ offices of the British Army of this era. Too many typos and only so-so maps drops my rating by half a star.
June 14, 2009
This is a decent account covering the formation, development and introduction of the Tank Corp on the Western Front during WW1. It covers all aspects of the first 'tank' and the men who crewed and fought with this weapon during WW1. The book looks at the battles that the Tank took part in and the politics of its use between commanders, politicians and the soldiers. Overall its a decent introduction to early tank warfare and one of few written on the subject ("Tanks & Trenches" and "The Devil's Chariots").
June 29, 2021
This is clearly a book for those interested in history related to military strategies, war, and war time politics of Europe.
While the text is quite badly written with broken grammar and typos at many places, the main takeaway is the depth of research that has gone into making this.
The events preceding and succeeding the advent of tanks in the WW1 which are somehow related to tanks are uncovered using a combination of public materials, correspondences and other articles from across the board. Ironically, the level of depth is also what makes it sluggish at many parts to process.
So, pick this up if you are interested in the topic, as that is what can keep you going.
I liked the descriptions of German defenses and how they evolved to meet the tanks, the amusing training exercises and the ongoing gap between strategists and front-line generals that unfortunately led to many avoidable deaths.
My favourite parts of course are the narration of the actual actions, especially from where the tanks at least do something beyond getting stuck in the muck.
While the text is quite badly written with broken grammar and typos at many places, the main takeaway is the depth of research that has gone into making this.
The events preceding and succeeding the advent of tanks in the WW1 which are somehow related to tanks are uncovered using a combination of public materials, correspondences and other articles from across the board. Ironically, the level of depth is also what makes it sluggish at many parts to process.
So, pick this up if you are interested in the topic, as that is what can keep you going.
I liked the descriptions of German defenses and how they evolved to meet the tanks, the amusing training exercises and the ongoing gap between strategists and front-line generals that unfortunately led to many avoidable deaths.
My favourite parts of course are the narration of the actual actions, especially from where the tanks at least do something beyond getting stuck in the muck.
June 15, 2022
An eye opener. Well researched this can be a difficult read in parts but the overall result is that war is hard, unpleasant and wasteful.
The reality is that whatever weapon is designed the first thing to do is develop a way to beat it. In the meantime lives will be lost through trial and error. Whilst reading this book modern Russian tanks are being destroyed by shoulder launched weapons, getting stuck in the mud or badly placed in line on the roadways in Ukraine.
The reality is that whatever weapon is designed the first thing to do is develop a way to beat it. In the meantime lives will be lost through trial and error. Whilst reading this book modern Russian tanks are being destroyed by shoulder launched weapons, getting stuck in the mud or badly placed in line on the roadways in Ukraine.
July 1, 2017
An excellent piece of military history, this one - informative and entertaining in equal measure. A truly amazing tale - SPOILER ALERT *** - I never knew how completely useless tanks were in WWI until I read this.
August 10, 2025
This book starts from the development of tanks and all the infighting, both political and military that went with it. It is though a ponderous book, it isn’t a page turner exactly and seems to take along time to get anywhere.
May 17, 2024
Very detailed but a bit of a slog to get through
November 11, 2012
I recommend this book thoroughly. The most surprising aspect is the sheer scale of tank employment by Britain in the last year of WW1, having started with only a handful of machines two years earlier. The courage of the crews is beyond comprehension and praise. An inspiring story and with wonderfully larger-than-life personalities.
April 12, 2012
In Band of Brigands Christy Campbell tells the story of British tanks in WWI, thier designers, their manufacturers their supporters, their opponents, and the men who fought and died in them
It's a remarkable story, well told.
It's a remarkable story, well told.
June 17, 2015
An important record that tells a fascinating story of the development of what became a critical element of modern warfare. It is a testament to the imagination and bravery of so many. immaculately researched on every level.
April 7, 2008
Fascinating history of the tank, built during WWI The personalities the technology the social history.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews