On a battlefield that witnessed the first mass use of tanks in 1917 and heralded a new type of warfare,

we follow the lads from the west riding of Yorkshire through a village, past Nornate Chate Chate to their memorial.

Under the shadow of Havering Corps wood, we find solace in a comrade cemetery, where we ponder. Does one name

somehow speak for them all? The Battle of Combrae in November and December of 1917 is seen by

many people as the first tank battle in history. But tanks have been first used on the Somme in September of 1916 in the Battle of Fleur's Corsolet.

And what Combray was, was the first mass use of tanks,

the first clear demonstration, really, of what tanks were capable of doing.

But it wasn't just a battle about tanks, as we'll

discover, during this walk, as we walked some of the ground connected with the 1917 battle

close to the village of Havering Corps. But the tanks used in this battle were parts of the tank

corps, which had only been in existence since July of

1917, having been formed under a raw warrants. Prior to that, they've been part of the

machine gun corps, and the formation of the tank corps almost coincided with their use

at the Third Battle of Epe, the Battle of Passchendale, as it's commonly known, in the summer of 1917, the wettest summer in living memory, when the grounds as well as shellfire saturated the battlefields around Eap, and the weather, combined with that shelling, turned the whole area into this vast quagmire conditions not at all

suitable for the use of tanks and the tanks that were employed there got bogged down some got

stuck in moving up towards the battle area and in the open and exposed ground they became prey to shell fire and there was an area

close to the men in road near hooge they became known as the tank cemetery because there were so many

wrecks of tanks from that period of the fighting this failure of the tanks in the third battle of

epe and some of the the trials and tribulations that they had had with tanks in the Third Battle of Eap and some of the trials and tribulations

that they had with them in the battles of Arras and then at Messines, for many senior officers

there was a thought of almost sidelining the tanks, but they were given essentially

another chance with Combrai an opportunity to demonstrate what tanks could do in grounds of their choosing favourable ground.

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