Hail to Deborah, tank that broke Germans

TIM HEAP climbed into the twisted carcass of Deborah, a British tank that smashed through German defences 100 years ago in the battle that marked the birth of modern warfare.

“My grandfather would have been standing right here up front. His DNA is still inside. And if he had got out 30 seconds later, I wouldn’t be here,” said the 65-year-old retired lecturer from Cockermouth in the Lake District.

At dawn on Nov 20 1917, a vast formation of almost 500 British “land ships” waged the Battle of Cambrai, northern France, the first in history where tanks were used en masse with air support.

The battle was the scene of some of the First World War’s bloodiest fighting and ended in stalemate, with 44,000 Allied and 50,000 German casualties. However, the charge famously broke the Germans’ “impenetrable” Hindenburg Line and hastened the demise of trench warfare. A century on, Deborah – one of the last surviving Mark IV tanks – is the centrepiece of Cambrai Tank 1917, a €1.5million (£1.3million) “interpretation centre” funded by France, to be inaugurated next weekend.

Five hundred officers of the Royal Tank Regiment, whose Colonel-in-Chief is the Queen, will parade to mark the centenary of its founding battle, alongside 100 French members of the 501st tank regiment.

Buried after the war, Deborah – tank D51 – was unearthed 19 years ago by Philippe Gorczynski. a local hotelier and historian who found her after a six-year hunt. He had kept the 27-ton tank in a barn ever since.

It now lies in a new bunker-like “grave” only a few yards from where she fell and where four of the tank’s eight-man crew are buried in the Flesquières Hill British Cemetery.

“Never since the Battle of Cambrai has the tank been so close to her crew,” said Mr Gorczynski.

Mr Heap’s grandfather, 2nd Lieut Frank Gustave Heap, 25, was its commander and one of only three crew who survived.

‘Never since the Battle of Cambrai has the tank been so close to her crew’