SHOOT quick. Shoot low. Shoot cunning. Shoot the enemy while they are rubbing their eyes.
Never mind the heat. Never mind the noise. Never mind the dust." Those are the harrowing first words you read upon opening Band of Brigands, a historical account of the lives of the young men who formed the British Tank Corps during the First World War.
Pieced together from war soldiers' diaries, recollections, photographs and letters by former defence correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph Christy Campbell, it brings the horrors and hardships of front line battles vividly to life. Without sentimentalising the heroic actions of the first men in tanks, Campbell lets historic facts talk for themselves and so manages to transport the reader into the hot, cramped and dangerous interior of British tanks, where the men "fought in stifling armoured boxes packed with petrol and explosives, aware that at any moment a shell-hit might incinerate them all". A humbling read.
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