The photograph enclosed is very poor quality but appears to show Egbert (see hole in front) Its from Stockton on Tees archives and is supposed to show a tank in Darlington post war (see date on photo). Egbert was in Darlington in Jan 1918 I have found details of its visit here and to neighbouring towns in local press archives. Suggestions please (need I ask?)
Must admit I came across this myself and it puzzled me. One possible solution that occurred to me is that the date was written some time (possibly some considerable time) after the event, and that the caption is erroneous.
1. The date is wrongly written (possibly the 19 is in fact a badly written 18 or someone mis read a date when filing and annotated the photo incorrectly, perhaps they started to write 1918 or whatever) If it was at the end of Jan1918 this would be within the bounds (just) of Egbert's tour of towns in the area. It would still pose a problem as although I don't have precise dates for each town I do have good evidence on the sequence in which the towns were visited and the time spent in each. The date on the photo (even if 1918) would blow this completely as it would make Darlington the last town visited and to use that famous phrase "this does not compute" 2. As well as visiting Darlington in Jan 1918 Egbert became that town's presentation tank in 1919. A number of towns have (erroneously) claimed to have been the town to which it was presented - presumably it went somewhere. If 2 is correct (and it may not be) then that is interesting in the context of the touring tank of which I have a couple of shots (one of which I've posted before) that has a hole right across the full width of its front plate as this would show that Egbert ended its career still with a hole only on one side of the front and in that case the two must be different
