As per the title, how were the first tank crews that saw combat in WWI selected and trained? I have read that British Mark I tanks at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette were the first to see combat, is this correct? I understand the first tanks were kept relatively secret, so how were crews selected and trained? Were they taken from infantry units, or perhaps logistic units? How long did training last, and what did the training involve? Did it include joint operations, or was it too secret to include other branches of the military?
My research specifically tackles the use of British tanks and tank crews on the Western Front, so while I can give insight, it will only be regarding the British crews and tanks.
It is correct that British Mark I tanks were the first to see combat at Flers-Courcelette in 1916. There were French tanks being developed and tested in 1916, just as the British had been developing their tanks over the first two years of the war, but two factors helped the British earn the honor of being first on the field. Firstly, Commander Douglas Haig ordered the tanks in 1916, and his enthusiasm for using them was a major factor in putting the tanks on the field at Flers-Courcelette. Secondly, the French spent longer refining their tank designs and developing greater variety of designs. The British developed and used their main design (Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV, Mark V, and Mark V*) without many changes, and only later developed a lighter tank (the Whippet). In contrast, the French developed both heavy and light tanks concurrently, thanks to the investment of several different companies (like Renault and Schneider).
When you say the tanks were kept “relatively” secret, this is a key point: the tanks were secret, but their existence was known among the general army before they saw action at Flers-Courcelette. For men in the infantry, it was possible to put in for a transfer to “the tanks”, or the Heavy Section of the Machine-Gun Corps as they were known in 1916. One man, Wilfred Bion, specifically mentions putting in for a transfer to the tanks “because it was the only way to penetrate the secrecy surrounding them.” The Machine-Gun Corps already contained a Motor Branch, which held the armoured cars of the British Expeditionary Force, and some men were recruited from the armoured car divisions to undergo tank training. The assumption was that men with familiarity of combustion engines could be trained in tank mechanics and operations more quickly. There is evidence also that the Motor-cycle magazine, which had a readership predisposed to mechanical and engineering interests, ran recruitment notices specifically for the Heavy Section of the Machine-Gun Corps (the early tanks). On another tack, men from the British artillery divisions were also approached for the Heavy Section: since the tanks were being outfitted with machine guns and heavy guns (a six-pounder Hotchkiss) and would require gunners, recruiters felt that men with previous artillery experience would already possess much of the necessary gunnery training and would thus require less training to be effective tank gunners than the average soldier.
The references made don’t refer specifically to tanks as we know them, and the information available to the average British soldier only indicated that “tanks” were another form of armoured car (as they were intended to be). In the end, recruitment followed a few different paths: the early administrators wanted to recruit mechanics, men with mechanical knowledge, and artillery gunners for the Heavy Section, but there was also the chance for infantrymen or men with no mechanical knowledge whatsoever to apply and transfer into the Heavy Section. Men from the Machine-Gun Corps were the first ‘batch’ of recruits since recruiters could approach them more easily and they had some of the necessary training, but the Heavy Section was not overly choosy in its early months.
Once selection was over, training began. The official tank training camp was formed at Bovington, Dorset, where the Tank Museum now stands today. The Tank Museum is really the best place to learn more about early British tanks, as they serve as an archive of the Heavy Section/Tank Corps/Royal Tank Regiment and have skilled staff who organize and publish the loads of material they possess. A newspaper article from Harold Littledale gives some explanation of the day-to-day process of tank training, but there was a nearly equal emphasis on both practical training and coursework. This was a result of the shortages affecting the Heavy Section early on: very few tanks were available for training, since most of the available tanks had to go to their sections and prepare to go to France. Once in France, there was another tank camp established to continue training, and crews grew more accustomed to the environment of the front lines.
The short answer to your last question is that tank training did not involve other branches of the military or any other men outside of the Heavy Section. It’s easier to think of the Heavy Section as a subset of artillery for administrative and training purposes: the mechanical requirements of their tanks (and their guns) occupied much of their training time, and working alongside infantry would gain them very little without knowing and seeing the terrain over which they were meant to cooperate. Artillery gunners practiced simply by shooting out to sea (for example, at Lulworth Cove) and didn’t have infantry around to ‘coordinate’ with; in the same way, the tanks practiced by driving over hills, shooting at targets while both moving and stationary, and practicing the signals which tanks would use to communicate between themselves. It wasn’t secrecy that demanded this kind of separation (though before Flers-Courcelette and for some time after, Bovington Camp was well-guarded and outsiders were rarely allowed in), but simply the mechanical demands of the tanks and the resources available to the BEF at large. Once the tanks reached France, they had more opportunities to work with the infantry more closely, but true coordination between tanks and infantry didn’t come to fruition until well into 1917.
I hope this helps answer most of your questions, but to encourage your research, here’s the books and sources I used and recommend:
R., Bion, Wilfred. The Long Week-End 1897-1919 : Part of a Life, Routledge, 2018. (I accessed this via ProQuest, so it may not be in the public domain.)
Watson, William Henry Lowe. A Company of Tanks. (available from Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44451)
Littledale, Harold. “With the Tanks”, in The Atlantic Monthly (available from their archive: https://www.unz.com/print/AtlanticMonthly-1918dec-00836/)
And again, I will repeat my encouragement of the Tank Museum’s resources. They have a website specifically created for the centenary of the First World War, and have some blog posts about recruitment:
http://tank100.com/training-combat/recruiting-heavy-section/
http://tank100.com/training-combat/recruiting-heavy-section-part-2/
There’s a mention of Ernest Swinton in those posts, who has a biography published as “Eyewitness” (available on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.210464/page/n7) to provide some reference.
And last but not least, a separate image showing the Motor-cycle recruitment page (from May 1916). It mentions the Heavy Section, but does not give any details about what the Heavy Section was. (https://s3.amazonaws.com/gwfattachments/monthly_04_2014/post-1494-0-81217300-1396475956.jpg) I don’t know if there’s a way to access the archives of the magazine for free, but it’s likely there is an archive somewhere I haven’t been able to find.
