Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last and today we go back exactly a hundred years to the first world war when a new weapon called a tank was used for the very first time.

We knew nothing, we didn't know what we were in for but we were told and warned that it was

exceedingly dangerous.

First time I'd actually commanded a tank in action.

I was petrified. We were completely isolated from the world. We had no means communication at all.

The thing got hotter and hotter and hotter, and if you wanted to see out the side, you look through steel periscopes and the tank inside itself

were just steeped in stigenglome. It was all gloomy, hot and steamy.

It was something like a kosher mar when I saw these tremendous machines

which we couldn't make out. We didn't know what they were, we never have seen them before. When they approached us,

went downwards, towards the trenches, we thought that we would be compelled to defeat Towers, Berlin.

Confronted by the math slaughter of trench warfare, both Britain and France had separately been working to develop a machine that might provide the solution.

It had to be able to cross no man's land withstand

withering machine gun fire cut through walls of barbed wire

and roll across German trenches.

What they came up with was a kind of slow heavy tractor with guns encased in steel.

To deal with the churned-up terrain, the British added caterpillar tracks

which had already been developed for agricultural machines.

The British Mark I was a rhomboid almost

oval shape. To maintain secrecy during its development it was said this odd

metal contraption was simply a special kind of water tank and the name Tank stuck.

Initially only a few dozen tanks crewed by an officer and seven men were sent to France

and they drew a lot of attention when they appeared at the front.

...