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The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘A wonderful mystery to be solved': Search begins in Dorset for ‘the Mother of all tanks'
At the height of the second world war, while British authorities were calling on citizens to donate metal to be recycled into weapons and warships, attention at the army base of Bovington Camp in Dorset turned to a collection of historic vehicles dating from the first war – among them a legendary tank that had been nicknamed 'Mother'. Mother was the prototype for the world's first battlefield tank, the Mark 1, which had been developed by Britain in 1915-6 to break the deadlock of the trenches. The vehicles were a huge technological leap forward that caused a sensation when rolled out on the battlefields ('astonishing our soldiers no less than they frightened the enemy', as the Manchester Guardian put it) and helped tip the scales in favour of the allies' eventual victory. Mother was a unique and hugely important piece of military and technological history. But with people across Britain donating their railings, saucepans and even keys for the war effort, there was no room for sentiment. Mother was surrendered to the scrappers to be melted down and recycled. Or was she? For decades, rumours persisted at Bovington Camp that to save it from being scrapped, 'the Mother of all tanks' had instead been secretly buried somewhere in the military base. Now, an army officer is planning an archaeological survey to search for the mythical tank after finding a historical letter that suggests the rumours are true. Staff Sgt Anthony Sherritt, a tank commander with the Royal Armoured Corps, came across the mystery of what happened to Mother several years ago when listening to a podcast; intrigued by the rumours, he began scouring military records in his free time for evidence of what really happened. He traced the source of the rumours to a former foreman at the British army's Tank Museum, which is based at Bovington Camp, who would frequently tell visitors that his father had been part of the team that hid the prototype. But still, there was no proof. Then, last summer, Sherritt came across a letter written by an officer called Lt Col NM Dillon about the wartime activities of a friend who had been based at Bovington, Maj Bill Brannon. One day, wrote Dillon, Brannon had 'found the scrap metal staff beginning to demolish some of the old tanks'. After waiting for the scrappers to stop at midday for lunch, 'Bill organised a towing tank and pulled four of the oldest tanks and buried them in the driving area. These four included Mother.' It was a eureka moment for Sherrett, who called a small group of fellow enthusiasts, buzzing with the news. 'I was super-excited, calling everyone – [saying] 'Look, I found this,'' he says. 'And they couldn't believe it.' Burying a tank in your lunch break may seem no small feat, but the expansive driver training area would have been full of enormous pre-dug holes, says Sherritt, to allow trainees to practice driving the vehicles in rough terrain. But even if Mother was buried, the next challenge is finding her. Bovington Camp stretches to 404 hectares (1,000 acres), and even the section Sherrett has identified as the wartime training area, not in the same spot as today, is enormous. 'It's a kilometre squared, and that's a huge piece of land,' Sherrett says. Now a patch of restricted heathland, it's not as if he can just wander around with a metal detector. 'It was used for driver training for 100 years so it's covered in metal. Back in the day, they probably didn't really care about any environmental issues and were just littering everywhere' – potentially including unexploded ammunition. Undeterred, Sherrett has spent a year petitioning defence authorities to be allowed survey the area; with that permission secured, he is crowdfunding to commission archaeologists to start the search later this autumn. Lidar (light detection and ranging) scans have already identified five spots that hint at a large object buried underground. According to Chris Price, the director of the Tank Museum, finding Mother 'would be a mic drop moment in the tank world. Jaws hitting the floors everywhere. 'There's every possibility that it won't be found – but it would be a wonderful thing to find, a wonderful mystery to be solved and given to everyone around the world.' 'It would be insane,' agrees Sherrett. 'Because it's not just a tank. It's everything else that she [led] to, the machine that broke the stalemate in world war one. There were no [battlefield] tanks before her. 'I joke with the Tank Museum all the time, saying 'You'll have to make space to put her in there,' because currently, all they have for her is a drawing.'
Scotsman
07-05-2025
- General
- Scotsman
Why this VE Day story may be the happiest of all
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Many families will have stories to tell about VE Day, the moment when Britain celebrated the end of six long years of war in Europe. But surely one of the happiest involves the grandfather and grandmother of Scotsman journalist Rachel Mackie. Her grandfather Derek Mackie fought in North Africa, Italy, France and Belgium. After being wounded near Ghent, he was transferred to a hospital in Wales, where doctors managed to save his right arm from amputation, and then to another in London. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Rachel Mackie's grandpa, Derek Mackie, volunteered for Army service in the Royal Armoured Corps in October, 1941 | NW On May 8, 1945, he was determined to join the celebrations and found himself at a party in St Pancras Town Hall, where he met 'a beautiful, tall and mysterious brunette, Lily – my grandmother,' Rachel writes. On the day that the war in Europe ended, love blossomed. They were married three years later.
Scotsman
06-05-2025
- General
- Scotsman
Love and War: A story handed down through generations: Remembering my grandfather on VE Day
Sign up to our History and Heritage newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... My Grandfather's 'VE Day' story is legendary in my family - a tale of real-live romance as a country finally emerged from the darkest depths of war. It's not like I only ever think of my grandpa on VE Day. I think about him, about all my grandparents, all the time, wondering what they would make of the world today. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad NW But VE Day does feel like an incredibly fitting day to pay tribute to him. I loved my Grandpa Mr grandpa was wry and funny. He was kind. When I was young, he would send me really interesting letters, typed on his old typewriter, that contained facts like what the longest word in the dictionary was, or what the highest mountain in France was, and I always felt like a grown up getting a letter through the post. I knew him in the way a child knows an adult, with awe, acceptance of authority, and only able to see them within the context of my own life. To me he wasn't a soldier that fought in a war, he wasn't a divorcee, a father, a businessman. He was my grandpa, who picked me up and hugged me when I saw him, and smoked like a chimney outside the house, the smell of stale smoke forever reminding me of him. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He was the man who, when our flight to London was extremely delayed, refused to go with the paramedics after he had a stroke in the restaurant because 'his family from Scotland were on their way' and then gave me my first taste of whisky when we arrived. The Second World War My grandpa, Derek Mackie, volunteered for Army service in the Royal Armoured Corps in October, 1941. He served in North Africa and Italy before being called home to train for D-Day. 'Much training, invasion preparation, waterproofing of vehicles etc,' he would write later. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad His regiment landed in France a day or so after D-Day - 'when a lot of the hoo-haa died down,' he casually mentioned to my aunt once - and advanced into Belgium, where, near the city of Ghent, he was wounded. He ended up in a specialist hospital in Wales where he was subject to penicillin injections, saving his arm. 'Initially right arm to be amputated, but saved by penicillin injections every two hours day and night or a fortnight,' he wrote. After the treatment, he was transferred to a hospital in London. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When the news of VE Day arrived, he and a friend commandeered a motorbike with a sidecar, and heading through London, in his words 'stopping at every pub on the way there'. Finally alighting at a party at St Pancras Town Hall, he bumped into a beautiful, tall and mysterious brunette Lily - my grandmother. I asked Nana once, years after grandpa's death, about that meeting. 'I mean, he must have been absolutely wasted,' I reasoned to her. She smiled and said: 'Oh God, yes, but then we all were.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Though war in Europe was over, my grandpa's regiment was drafted back out to Berlin, to monitor the British sector, which happens to be a story all of its own. He later wrote: '22 Oct 1946 - demobilised, almost five years to the day.' This year saw him in a civilian suit with a new job, starting a new life, and on April 3, 1948 in London, my grandparents married. My grandparents on their wedding day | NW A story told through generations Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This story through the years has had bits added to it - depending on the family member telling the story to the next wide-eyed generation of Mackies. Flourishes added, comic touches perfected, dramatic pauses essential, details mangled. Though as much as this story plays out like a beautiful film or book you'd pick up at the airport, the truth was that grandpa carried his time in the army with him, not the black-and-white movies or the drunken parties in St Pancras, nor the romantic stories or sepia photographs, but the reality of war. It shaped who he was. His part in the war was a life-long sacrifice. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He strongly believed in discipline and could be very strict. My grandpa was flawed and scarred, funny and generous, intelligent and often furious. He inspired me and was slightly intimidating at the same time. I remember him in a series of photos and video clips in my head, like my own personal TV show, watching through a screen a million miles away. I remember him as if I'm still a child, growing up too late to ask him all the questions I wish I'd asked. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I have a written account of his time in the war - written by him as part of a family tree competition I entered in primary six. I read it at least once a year, around this time of year of course, my hand running over the typed pages created by that beloved typewriter. It's clinical and to the point. Not once does he talk about how it felt. Whether he was homesick, scared, angry. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I've heard from others small details about his time in the war, some frightening or bizarre nuggets of history that aren't written down anywhere, but occasionally tumbled into conversation at family meet-ups, long after my Grandpa passed away. We have a responsibility to tell these stories I've written this story down before and I've enjoyed writing it down again. It feels important for everyone to remember, not just the big, monumental moments in the war, but the small ones. The people, their lives, their stories.
The Independent
20-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Twenty-thousand troops? We only have 25 main battle tanks working at best
When news that the UK would be at the front of the queue to provide troops for a Ukraine peacekeeping force, possibly as many as 20,000, a contact from army headquarters at Andover messaged me: 'Where's this 20,000 figure come from? Who's briefing this? We couldn't do this in a month of Sundays!' The next days saw this 'offer' drop to 10-12,000 troops for the as-yet-unspecified ground force – but the panic among army planners was much the same: there has been no requirement for such a deployment, the army is not set up for such numbers and has not been funded to do so. And, worse, the army is at a nadir as regards its capability to provide robust, capable, war-fighting forces of the type that would be needed for Ukraine – equipment is either ancient, non-existent, yet-to-arrive; ammunition stocks would not last a week if push came to shove; and communications systems are old and flaky. It might not go too far to suggest that the British army is at its lowest nadir since June 1940, after Operation Dynamo saw the British Expeditionary Force evacuated from Dunkirk. Now, the main battle tank (MBT) force is at a disastrous low. The Challenger 2 fleet (just over 400 were bought in the 1990s) has a notional strength of 213 tanks, after 14 were donated to Ukraine. However, these have been at the receiving end of 'malign neglect' – maintenance regimes slashed in the 2000s and 2010s, spares not purchased, and supply chains disappearing as companies went bust. In 2023, it was reported that only around 160 of the fleet was in any fit state to be used on operations (after extensive, expensive work) – and the situation got worse. The end result? The Royal Armoured Corps has not been able to deploy a realistic Challenger 2 regiment of 59 tanks for many years. Lack of available Challenger 2s has meant that the army's ambition for MBTs has been at the 20-25 level, at the very best. When Denmark and Sweden have more credible tank forces than the United Kingdom, you know there's an issue. And, as the Ukraine War has shown, tanks do have a major role, especially if a peacekeeping force were to be a credible deterrent. The Royal Artillery used to have a force of over 100 self-propelled AS90 artillery pieces. But much like the Challenger 2 fleet, this had been left to rot, with only a handful available even for training. Just before Covid, I sat next to a lieutenant colonel who was taking over an AS90 regiment: 'I have 24 guns in the shed, no tracks, no engines. I will have to do a lot of work to stop morale falling'. That was over 5-years ago, and, again, the issues of no spares and defunct supply chains have not made this situation any better. At least 32 AS90 have been gifted to Ukraine – an entirely sensible move. But this has left the army with little to no artillery. An interim batch of 14 Swedish Archer 155mm guns has been bought – but this is an incredibly limited number. And if the Ukraine War has shown us anything, artillery is still the queen of the battlefield. A British force deployed to Ukraine would need substantially more artillery, or would lack credibility. And even assuming that the army could deploy 12 Archers as part of a Ukraine ground force (24-36 is what would be needed, at least), to make them credible they'd need the ammunition stocks. In combat, Ukraine has shown that you have to budget for 200 shells per day, per gun – and that's a floor, not a ceiling. And you'd need at least 30 days' supply, maybe 60 days. In total, that's a minimum of 75,000 shells, with a cost of £350m, and as high as 150,000shells/£700m. At present, the UK simply does not hold anything like the sort of artillery ammo stocks that would be needed in conflict. Indeed, it will take several years for these to be reached. These are two vignettes – but they are representative of the parlous equipment state of the British army. Other armoured vehicle fleets are equally in dire straits. Think about it: 35 years ago, Warrior infantry combat vehicles charged into Kuwait; 30 years ago, a Warrior battlegroup was deployed to Bosnia amid much acclaim. The vehicles that are still in service are substantially the same as they were – opportunities to modernise and upgrade have been forever pushed aside. Some might point to areas where the picture isn't all that bad. The Boxer APC is in full production, vehicles are being delivered to the user; the Challenger 3 upgrade, to create a new, modern version of the current Challenger 2 is underway; The Ajax family of armoured vehicles is also in production; and last year, an agreement was signed with Germany to cooperate and co-produce an artillery version of Boxer. So, the darkest days are always before dawn we can see the first glimmers of the sun might on the horizon. However, and here's the beef, Challenger 3 tanks won't be delivered for at least 2 years, and these will be for trials, not for operations. There have been offers by industry to accelerate Boxer deliveries that have not been accepted by the army/MoD, so we are some years off from the army to be able to deploy into combat areas. Similarly, new artillery systems won't arrive until the end of the decade, a 5-6-year wait (in contrast, the time between order and delivery of Ukraine's Boxer artillery systems was 27 months. There have also been offers of accelerated deliveries for the UK, but no decisions have yet been made). Ajax? Who knows? It is already a decade late. So, what can the army offer for a Ukraine peacekeeping force? 'Can you round up 12,000 troops with their weapons, on a parade square, and then put them on buses to Ukraine? Probably,' says my Andover source. 'But what can they do once they are there? There are unmarked minefields everywhere, so you'd need a whole load of protected vehicles – which we either don't have, or we let them moulder in sheds. So, what? Let them patrol in unarmoured Land Rovers again? That went well in Iraq and Afghanistan…' And even if you could round up a 12,000 force, after 6-8-months you'd need to rotate them with another 12,000 troops, the same again 6-8-months after that, and so on. Under the current funding arrangements, the army (and the same is true for the Royal Navy and RAF) is currently not organised to do this. Regarding the costs of any Ukraine peacekeeping operation, taking ones from the 1990s and 2000s, 12-15,000 troops would be £3-5bn at the very least. Again, the army is not funded for this, so it would have to come out of central reserves. A wider set of questions, therefore, needs to be asked. Has the army spoken truth to power about what it can realistically do? Or has the famed 'can do' attitude been to the fore: 'Don't worry: it'll be alright on the night'? Has institutional embarrassment meant that deficiencies have not been highlighted, so the prime minister doesn't have a true picture of how bad things really are?
