"Peppering begun at once. Thought old thing was going to be drowned in a shower of bullets. Germans dashed up from all sides. We fired at them point-blank. The survivors had another try. More of them went down.... A rain of bullets resumed. It was like as if hundreds of rivets were being hammered into the hide of the 'tank.' We rushed through.... Got right across a trench. Made the sparks fly. Went along parapet, routing out Germans everywhere. Tried to run, but couldn't keep it up under our fire. Threw up the sponge and surrendered in batches."
"One can hardly imagine any spectacle more terrifying," said an eyewitness, "than these monsters must have presented to German eyes when, after a hurricane bombardment, through the smoke and dust of bursting shells, the great shapes came lumbering forward in the gray light of dawn. The enemy evidently had no hint of what they were. They emptied their rifles at them, and the things came rolling on. They turned on their machine guns, and the bullets only struck sparks from the great beasts' awful sides. In several places they sat themselves complacently astride of the trench, and swept it in both directions and all the ground beyond with their machine guns. Against strong points they were invaluable, because they could thrust themselves, secure in the toughness of their hide, in close quarters where unprotected infantry could never get. In woods they trampled their way through the undergrowth and climbed over or broke down barricades, contemptuous of the machine guns and rifle fire which made the approach of unarmored men impossible."
During this advance the British penetrated the third German line, which was shattered at all points. Three new villages--Flers, Martinpuich, and Courcelette--fell into British hands and more than twenty miles of German trenches were taken. Over 100 officers and 4,000 other ranks were captured by the British.
Martinpuich, which was known to be strongly fortified by the Germans, was the first trench to be carried by the British troops almost without a check. Beyond this was a series of other trenches and fortified positions in shell holes and the like. And here the "tanks" did effective service, their appearance creating consternation among the German troops, whose gunfire was powerless to injure or to impede the triumphal progress of these ungainly forts on wheels. In one instance a German battalion commander surrendered to a "tank" and was taken on board as a passenger. Up to the outskirts of Martinpuich there was stiff fighting and the village itself bristled with machine guns. The Germans stubbornly and bravely contested the British advance through the ruins. The British troops, however, continued to push forward almost yard by yard until the whole place was in their hands, and they had dug themselves in in a line on the farthest eastern and northern sides of the village.