The Tank war, by Mark Urban - review

In November 1941, Sergeant Jake Wardrop narrowly escaped being killed when his tank was crippled in the midst of a catastrophic battle in the north African desert where the armour and artillery of Rommel’s Afrika Korps destroyed scores of other British tanks. ‘It wasn’t a very healthy position to be in’, he wrote in his diary that evening, ‘but it could have been worse; at least it wasn’t raining.’

When he came across this mordant comment in the course of his research, Mark Urban must have realised that he had struck gold. Aiming to tell the story of the second world war through the eyes of one unit, he had plumped for the 5th battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment largely because of the wealth of letters and journals written by those who served in it. But among them Wardrop’s diary stands out like a unicorn among horses. Mercurial in mood and sufficiently quick-tempered to end important arguments with his fists, the Glasgow-born Wardrop served with 5RTR from the first fumbling encounters in 1940, through north Africa, Italy, France and into Germany in 1945. Along the way, he changed from bolshie novice to seasoned sweat, but more importantly developed an emotional eloquence that makes his diary as compelling as the very best journals of the Peninsular War.

By selecting one small group, and weaving their stories into the evolution of their tanks and of military strategy, Urban has composed a narrative that presents the familiar story of the war from a genuinely fresh perspective, sometimes shocking in its rawness. Like airmen, tank crews depended utterly on their machines, at first cleverly designed, but hopelessly unreliable British products, then mass-produced American models that ran forever, but turned out to burn like barbecues, and finally highly evolved compromises of fire-power, armour and speed. Crammed into the metal heart of this dangerous, powerful weapon, the crews developed emotional bonds whose intensity provides the central theme of Urban’s book.