The Cambrai Tank 1917 Museum is built around the remains of Deborah, a British WW1 tank that took part in a major armoured attack on German lines in November 1917.

Battle of Cambrai

The town of Cambrai in the Nord department of France, north of Paris and 36 kilometres east of Arras, fell under German occupation within weeks of the start of the First World War. Not only was it an important road and rail hub through which the front lines could be supplied, but also it was far enough behind the lines to not be interrupted by enemy action and so made a perfect location for headquarters staff, medical staff, logistics centres and training barracks.

For those same reasons its capture was a key goal of the Allies on the 20th November 1917.

The early morning ‘surprise’ offensive began with a thousand gun creeping artillery barrage and was spearheaded by 437 tanks across a 10 kilometre front. It wasn’t a complete surprise to the Germans who had anticipated such an attack, and the Battle for Cambrai is noted, not so much for the Allied use of massed tanks and new artillery tactics, as for the huge German counter-offensive which pushed the Allies back almost to their start position.

The ‘Butcher’s Bill’ for the two week battle? British forces* suffered 75,681 casualties (10,042 dead). German forces had 54,720 casualties (8,817 dead).

Some 188 British tanks were lost or captured. Among them, Deborah, a Mark IV ‘female’ tank. In the vernacular of the Royal Tank Regiment, ‘Male tanks’ were armed with 6-pounder quick-firing cannons in the sponsons (turrets on the sides) and a Lewis machine gun in the front. ‘Female tanks’ were armed only with machine guns.

Deborah and her 8-man crew in the second assault wave, made it as far as the village of Flesquières, a strongpoint in the German defences, where she was hit by a German artillery shell, killing five of her crew. The tank’s commander, 2nd Lieutenant Frank Heap, and the two remaining crew managed to bail out and make their way back to British lines. Heap was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery.

And there she remained on the battlefield until the end of the war, when she was buried in a deep pit in the clean up operations.

The unearthing of Deborah

In the early 1990s, a local hotelier and WW1 history enthusiast, Philippe Gorczynski, heard a rumour about a buried tank. He embarked on a long quest to find it, following up leads and scouring through official records. In November 1998, he finally located the tank and, aided by a team of local archaeologists began digging her out.

Deborah was registered as an Historic French Monument on 14th September 1999. For a while she was temporarily kept in a barn in Flesquières, before being moved to the permanent museum, which opened in 2017.

The Museum

The museum, built in concrete with angular exterior walls that reflect the rhomboidal shape of a WW1 tank, is not large. The interior is on two levels with the largest space or ‘main hall’ recreating the pit in which Deborah was found. There is a simple route through it, from the upper level down into the main hall and then back up to the top starting at top. The reception is on the upper level, and next to it, the first room where, using a digital map and video projection, the background to the Battle of Cambrai is explained.

 

Then it is straight out onto the balcony overlooking Deborah in the main hall.

A long curved pathway leads down around the outside of the main hall, making Deborah accessible for wheelchairs. The limited space under the balcony and pathway is used for some display cabinets with artefacts from the tank and from the battle.

On the far side of Deborah there are eight crew photos, however, one of them, 2nd Lt George Ranald MacDonald, was the former commander of Deborah who had been wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele. He was replaced by 2nd Lt Frank Heap. So there is an eighth unknown crew member, who apparently survived.

Commander 2nd Lieutenant Frank Heap, MC	Survived
1st Driver Lance Corporal G. C. Foot, DCM	KIA
Gunner F. W. Tipping	KIA
Gunner William Galway	KIA
Private Walter G. Robinson	KIA
Gunner Joseph Cheverton	KIA
Lance Corporal David Marsden	Survived
Unknown	Survived

KIA = Killed in Action

There were four machine gunners on a Mk4 tank, plus the commander, driver (1st driver) and two gears men (often referred to as 2nd & 3rd drivers) who literally changed the gears at the back of the tank. It seems likely that 19-yr-old David Marsden was the ‘2nd driver’ since he had been Deborah’s driver when she was first used in combat at the Battle of Passchendaele… although his family thought he was a machine gunner. The unknown soldier was therefore probably the 3rd driver. Interesting that two of the survivors were located at the back of the tank. Was it safer there or quicker to exit?

After leaving the main hall and the crew photos, there are a set of model WW1 tanks from both sides, and then a small cinema** with tiered seating and steps back up to the upper level and a corridor back to reception. In the corridor there’s a large B/W photograph of a group of tank commanders snatching a few days’ rest after their part in the Battle of Passchendaele.

The photo was taken on September 26, 1917***. The Battle of Passchendaele, which had already been raging for nearly three months leaving an estimated half-a-million dead and wounded on both sides, was still being fought a few miles away. And next month they were to be thrown into battle once more at Cambrai.

What’s amazing about this photograph is that all of them bar one, have been identfied and all of them survived the war! Though several were seriously wounded in the battle of Cambrai. Not only that, several went on to serve again in the Second World War… and still survived! They returned home to careers such as solicitor, policeman, banker, etc.

One of the most interesting I think is Maj Richard Cooper (4th from left, standing by the record player) who was wounded at the Battle of Cambrai. After the war, he moved to Wyoming where his landowner father had set up a meat business on land which turned out to have oil under it! He became a big-game hunter and a close friend of Earnest Hemmingway and the Swedish hunter Baron Bror Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke, who Hemmingway described as “not a man that you forget”. Nor his ex-wife Karen Blixen who wrote ‘Out of Africa’. Cooper died on his estate in what is now Tanzania in 1952.

In 2017 Channel Four TV commissioned presenter Guy Martin to build a working replica Mark 4 tank called Deborah II to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Cambrai, which they then took to Cambrai for the event. It can now be seen at the Norfolk Tank Museum.

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* It was almost entirely a British & Commonwealth offensive.
** showing short videos about the Battle of Cambrai and some of the other battlefield and memorial sites to visit in the area.
*** at the Tank Corps camp at La Lovie, near the Belgian town of Poperinge.

Declaration: I was on a self-driving research trip supported by Pas-de-Calais Tourisme. Museum entry was complementary. (Technically, the museum is just over the border in the Nord department, but these days it’s all part of the Hauts de France region.)