ttled down and
we began our training. Our first course of study was in the mechanism
of the tanks. We marched down, early one morning, to an engine hangar
that was both cold and draughty. We did not look in the least like
embryo heroes. Over our khaki we wore ill-fitting blue garments which
men on the railways, who wear them, call "boilers." The effect of
wearing them was to cause us to slouch along, and suddenly Talbot
burst out laughing at the spectacle. Then he remembered having heard
that some of the original "Tankers" had, during the Somme battles,
been mistaken for Germans in their blue dungarees. They had been fired
on from some distance away, by their own infantry; though nothing
fatal ensued. In consequence, before the next "show" chocolate ones
were issued.

In the shadows of the engine shed, a gray armour-plated hulk loomed
up.

"There it is!" cried Gould, and started forward for a better look at
the "Willie."

Across the face of Rigden, the instructor, flashed a look of scorn and
pain. Just such a look you may have seen on the face of a young mother
when you refer to her baby as "it."

"Don't call a tank 'it,' Gould," he said with admirable patience. "A
tank is either 'he' or 'she'; there is no 'it.'"

"In Heaven's name, what's the difference?" asked Gould, completely
mystified. The rest of us were all ears.

"The female tank carries machine guns only," Rigden explained. "The
male tank carries light field guns as well as machine guns. Don't ever
make the mistake again, any of you fellows."

Having firmly fixed in our minds the fact that we were to begin on a
female "Willie," the instruction proceeded rapidly. Rigden opened a
little door in the side of the tank. It was about as big as the door
to a large, old-fashioned brick oven built into the chimney beside the
fireplace. His head disappeared and his body followed after. He was
swallowed up, save for a hand that waved to us and a muffled voice
which said, "Come on in, you fellows."

Gould went first. He scrambled in, was lost to sight, and then we
heard his voice.

McKnutt's infectious laugh rose above the sound of our mirth. But not
for long.

"Hurry up!" called Rigden. "You next, McKnutt."

McKnutt disappeared. Then to our further astonishment his rich Irish
voice could be heard upraised in picturesque malediction. What was
Rigden doing to them inside the tank to provoke such profanity from
them both? The rest of us scrambled to find out.