ABSTRACT
After the battalion had recovered from Christmas and New Year, we settled down to ordinary camp routine. Each company had a few tanks, all in very bad condition. These were at a tank park about a mile from our camp. Our chief work in the very cold weather we were having was to keep tanks in condition. They had to be run constantly to prevent freezing in the cooling system. Also they had to be moved, as otherwise even the tracks froze! You see, mud always got in between the actual chain track and the rollers which the track ran on. This mud would freeze and become like cement. This was so powerful that if you started your engine and tried to run the tank with the tracks frozen, all that happened was the complete destruction of the transmission. We had enormous trouble with this in all our tank shows in cold weather. All the time we had been standing-to behind Cambrai it had been a constant source of anxiety, as you can imagine, for we were always supposed to be ready for action, and any mistake with this would have meant possible disaster if an attack started.
