Hello! I came across the photos of a tank memorial taken in 30´s or 40´s. She seems to carry a serial number 2596 or 2546. Can anyone identify this tank and place? Thanks
This is a marvellous find and thanks for sharing it. Having studied this for a little while, I've convinced myself that this is 2596 and the location is St Souplet, France. Up until now I only had two other photos of this tank and only on one was the serial number even half legible. I had concluded it was 2598 but this photo shows I was wrong about the last digit.
This tank, which incidentally is a Mark IV Female, served at Cambrai with C Battalion as C58 "Chili II", a tank of 9th Section, 9th Company and was commanded by 2/Lt A. Elsbury. Oddly, the records suggest on 20 November 1917 it fired 124 6 pounder rounds, so that record's clearly wrong! I had always suspected as much, as 25xx was a Mark IV Female number.
In 1918 the tank served with 7th (formerly G) Battalion. The partial number -8 seen on the fuel tank is presumably G18 or G28 etc. The tank has its white/red/white recognition stripes still visible.
I will post another photo to verify the location and its service with 7th Battalion.
Here's a captioned photo of the St Souplet tank. The strange eye shaped mark on the tank's side, mid way between the WRW stripes and the sponson is a black stylised G with the tank's crew number (the -8) in the centre. All 7th Battalion tanks were marked like this in 1918 - see for example G11 on the cover of "Landships of Lincoln".
Once again, many thanks for this photo and the new information it reveals. Now to update my databases!
