To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [334]
At St. Mihiel, he would have been just as happy driving the tank himself, a practice enjoyed by the British commanders. From their first massed fight at Cambrai, the British senior officers had refused to stay back in the headquarters, generals donning the thick leather helmets, climbing in beside the privates who worked the guns. But the British tanks were huge, had space inside for several men. The Renaults were compact, claustrophobic, room for only the driver, who sat up front, and one other man, the gunner, who manned the turret. They had no radios, no means to communicate either with headquarters or the other tanks who moved in the same formation. As the number of tanks grew, so too did the experience of their commanders, and lessons had been learned from costly mistakes. In many of the early fights, the tanks had been placed directly under the command of the infantry officers, men who had no idea how the tanks should be used. Too often the tanks were driven by men with inadequate training, who sometimes tumbled their lumbering vehicles straight down into deep holes or, even if they kept their machines functioning, they ignored the needs of the infantrymen they were supposed to support. Often, the enormous firepower of the tank was negated by the lack of training by the gunners, the French in particular ignoring any emphasis on target practice. But eventually even the most reluctant generals had begun to accept what the foot soldiers already knew. Against the Maxims, and the increasingly accurate German light artillery, there could be no more comforting presence in the open field than a column of tanks.
With the increasing acceptance of the tank as a valuable tool, the French had developed the methods for maneuvering and coordinating the great machines under fire. Patton and Rockenbach had adopted many of the same practices. Each platoon of five tanks would be led by an officer on the ground, the man walking alongside, guiding the great machines, coordinating with other platoons by runner, the men the infantry called the Suicide Squad, the men who had one duty: run like hell across the battlefield carrying the messages from one commander to the other. There were four platoons to each company, two or three companies to a battalion. In the fight to come, Patton would command two battalions in the field, a total of one hundred forty tanks.
During the battle through the St. Mihiel salient, he knew that Rockenbach expected him to stay behind, and thus, to stay in direct contact with the tank brigade headquarters. But Patton had spent too many hours with these men and their amazing machines, had instead assigned an officer to remain in charge at his command post, while Patton himself advanced with the tanks. As his machines pursued the fight, he wouldn’t rely on his staff of runners, had taken the fight into his own hands, darting among the tanks like some playful puppy, issuing commands to each driver. But his physical stamina could not match his enthusiasm, and finally he had climbed up, rode, surprising the driver of the Renault, as well as the foot soldiers who followed them across the narrow fields and cut ground. From his new vantage point, he could see more of the fight, guided the tanks by orders and hand signals to exhausted runners. As the tanks advanced, Patton could pick out the retreating Germans, or others who had stayed with their Maxim