BMMHS Village Hall Meeting for October 2026

The “tank phase” of the Battle of Cambrai lasted until about 2pm on the first day – 8 hours in all. Tanks may have grabbed the headlines gaining nearly 5 miles on that first day, but it was technical innovations in artillery that enabled General Byng to reintroduce the strategic principle of surprise back in to the battlefield. Tanks alone could not do that. The battle lasted a further 18 days and was remarkably similar to the other attritional battles of 1917: A poorly managed slow slog in difficult conditions against a well-entrenched enemy. Then the German’s counter-attacked with their solution to the problem of how to reintroduce surprise. The lecture is centred on the management of innovation in the First World War and just why the key discovery was made by a man sitting behind the lines on a latrine…