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  Stock last updated on 07 December 2021
 
   

Tank Corps   20 Books
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4th Battalion Royal Tank Corps Standing Orders 1930. 128pp. (inc. blank interleaves). No publication details but "This edition... issued by Lt.-Col. M.C. Festing... Catterick Camp, Yorks. February, 1930."  #55587
[HLMainPic] Customary regimental regulations &c., but quite a scarce inter-war amoured regiment version, including regs. re tanks & other vehicles. Orig. blue morocco, gilt ttle to front, marbled endpapers & gilt edges. Nice copy. See illustration on our website.   £45
BAKER-CARR (Brig.-Gen. C.D., CMG, DSO) From Chauffeur to Brigadier. 1st Ed., 323pp., portrait frontis., 30 photos. Benn. 1930  #56278
[HLMainPic] Comm. RB 1898, 2nd Bn. in Sudan & Boer War. This memoir concerns WW1 when he founded the Machine Gun school at Camiers, later joined the Heavy Branch MGC & commanded 1st Tank Brigade. Orig. green cloth titled in black, sp. little sunned & worn, generally very sound, about VG, scarce. See illustration on our website.   £75
BAKER-CARR (Brig.-Gen. C.D., CMG, DSO) From Chauffeur to Brigadier. 1st Ed., 323pp., portrait frontis., 30 photos. VG in dw. Benn. 1930  #59070
[HLMainPic] Comm. RB 1898, 2nd Bn. in Sudan & Boer War. This memoir concerns WW1 when he founded the Machine Gun school at Camiers, later joined the Heavy Branch MGC & commanded 1st Tank Brigade. Orig. green cloth, titled in black, nice copy in VG dw & scarce thus. See illustration on our website.   £145
BROWNE (Capt. D.G., MC) The Tank in Action. 1st Ed., x+517pp., frontis., 20 photos., sketch maps. Blackwood. 1920  #62766
[HLMainPic] Valuable contemporary account by an officer who won the MC with the 7th Bn. Contains detailed accounts of a large number of tank actions, including, from personal experience, the Cockcroft, Cambrai, Bourlon Wood, 1918 battles &c. "...his best chapters are those of an eye-witness. He is at times severely critical & perhaps even unjust, though he has obviously tried not to be. For the reader who contemplates tackling one book only on tanks in the War this is probably the best, for Captain Browne is a lucid & entertaining writer." - Falls. Orig. blue cloth, sp. tanned o/w VG & rare. See illustration on our website.   £225
COOPER (Bryan) Tank Battles of World War I. 1st Ed., 95pp., 97 photos., 7 maps. VG in dw. Allan. 1974  #57098
[HLMainPic] Useful precis inc. eye-witness accounts. VG in dw. See illustration on our website.   £15
FLETCHER (David) Landships: British Tanks in the First World War. 1st Ed., laminated card wraps., [iv]+60pp., photos. & diagrams throughout. HMSO. 1984  #56392
[HLMainPic] Invaluable introduction to the subject, only published in this pbk. form. VG. See illustration on our website.   £15
FULLER (Bt.-Col. J.F.C., DSO) Tanks in the Great War 1914-1918. 1st Ed., xxiv+331pp., 8 plates, 16 diagrams, 10 maps (one fldg.). Murray. 1920  #62767
[HLMainPic] From 1916-1918 Fuller was Chief General Staff Officer of the Tank Corps & a leading planner of the Battle of Cambrai. As one of Britain's foremost military thinkers & authors he was a constant & vocal advocate of the mechanised arm. "Colonel Fuller's book on tanks in the War differs from the others on this subject. Like them it gives a short history of the early struggles, developments, & set-backs; but the author, a well-known writer on strategy & tactics, is always more concerned with the future of armoured & catterpillar-propelled vehicles in warfare - whether for offence or transport - than in their actual achievements between 1914 & 1918. The work was written before the 'mechanization' of the Army had advanced very far, but it does not suffer from this fact, so long as that is borne in mind. It is, indeed, ahead of its time." - Falls (awarding a coveted star). Important & extremely scarce work, orig. red cloth, gilt with Tank Corps badge to front, VG but for some slight tanning to sp., comparatively a very good example given that the inferior cloth which Murray unaccountably used in the book's production is prone to tearing at the head & tail of the sp. & to wear generally. See illustrations on our website.   £325
HAIGH (Capt. Richard, MC, Tank Corps) Life in a Tank. 1st Ed., [vii]+141pp., 8 plates. VG in dw. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1918  #59246
[HLMainPic] Author, a regular officer of the Berkshire Regt., was attached to Heavy Banch MGC towards the end of 1916, trained on tanks in France & participated in several assaults on the Hindenburg Line in 1917 (Bullecourt &c.): these experiences are described in novelised form here. Haigh later toured the US, demonstrating the tank's capabilities, in a publicity/fundraising exercise of which this book was doubtless a spin-off. Attractive orig. dec. grey cloth, VG in very attractive & rare pictorial dw; this of particular interest as, at the foot of the front panel is printed "Commander of the Tank Britannia" - which indicates that Haigh belonged to "B" Battalion. See illustration on our website.   £245
JONES (Lt. [Henry] Paul [Mainwaring]) War Letters of a Public-School Boy. With a Memoir by His Father. 1st Ed., vi+280pp., portrait, 7 plates. Cassell. 1918  #59251
[HLMainPic] Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones was born in 1896, ed. at Dulwich College & Balliol College, Oxford. Poor vision prevented a combatant commission, but he joined the Army Service Corps in April 1915 & served in France from July that year, initially as Requisitioning Officer of the 9th Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division: almost one year later he was transferred to the Divisional Supply Column as Supply Officer (this was an unwelcome posting: "I told my colonel I didn't want the job and beseeched him to leave me with my brigade. He was adamant.") Relief came when he was moved again, to command an ammunition working-party on the Somme. After the battle Jones was appointed to another Cavalry Brigade, then in February 1917 he secured a transfer to the Machine Gun Corps Heavy Branch – the Tank Corps – & served with "C" (or 3rd) Battalion at Arras & was killed in action on 31st July 1917 (first day of the Third Battle of Ypres): "when advancing with his tank north-east of Ypres, he was killed by a sniper's bullet." He was incredibly unlucky as, according to Cpl. Jenkins, the second-in-command of his tank, the bullet entered the tank through a port-hole and hit him in the head. He was buried "at a point west of Zonnebeke" but his grave was evidently destroyed in later fighting as he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial. Contains detailed biographical notes and some 120pp. observant war letters including fairly unusual account of a supply officer for eighteen months at the front. Orig. green cloth, titled in black, VG. See illustration on our website.   £75
MAURICE (Major R.F., MC) The Tank Corps Book of Honour. 1st Ed., ii+460pp., frontis., 3 plates. Spottiswoode, Ballantyne. 1919  #62227
[HLMainPic] Contains a complete listing of awards to officers & men with citations for all immediate awards (inc. MMs), also Roll of Hon. & the texts of various Despatches & complimentary messages. Index. Orig. red cloth, titled in black, little rubbed/worn, VG. See illustration on our website.   £45

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