In a slight fog, at 6:20 on the morning of Nov. 20, 1917, the tank entered modern warfare. At that moment 378 steel monsters rolled toward the German lines on the Cambrai front. The armored vehicles, traveling at three miles an hour and closely followed by British infantry, ripped through the Germans' intricate barbed-wire defenses, slithered across their wide trenches. The surprised Germans bolted before the tanks' machine-gun fire. In ten hours 10,000 German soldiers surrendered. The Allied command lacked the wit or experience to make Cambrai a decisive victory, but the...
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