Harold Mortimore was 23 years old when he commanded a British Mark I tank named Daredevil into the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on the Somme. According to The Tank Museum at Bovington, Dorset, he led it across no man’s land at 5:15 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1916. The museum calls Daredevil the first tank in history to see action on a battlefield.
The machine goes by two names in the museum’s account. Daredevil is the name it carried into the attack; D1 is the designation the museum uses when it records where the tank’s day ended.
The museum set out Mortimore’s part in its article “Morty’s Daredevil – The First Tank Action,” published Sept. 15, 2023. “At 5.15am on 15th September 1916, Captain Harold Mortimore led his tank Daredevil across no man’s land,” it opens. “This was the first tank in history to see action on a battlefield.”
A secret weapon on the Somme
The tank was new enough that the men crewing it had volunteered for something they could not discuss. The Tank Museum says Mortimore, known as “Morty,” had crashed an aeroplane while training with the Royal Naval Air Service, and that “when volunteers were asked to join a top secret and dangerous mission he put his hand up immediately.”
He went into battle in what the museum calls a “Mark I Male tank.” The museum’s Google Arts & Culture exhibition on the battle gives the numbers for that first day: “49 were earmarked, 32 made it to the start line and, of those, only 18 went into action.”
That attrition shaped Daredevil’s day. Mortimore’s daughter, Dr. Tilly Mortimore, gave the museum her family’s account of what happened to the other machines assigned with him. “His tank was supposed to go into battle with two others, but they had broken down so my dad went in on his own,” she told the museum.
Delville Wood and the road to Flers
Daredevil had a specific job. Per the Tank Museum, “Mortimore was tasked to attack enemy strongpoints at Delville Wood” and to “provide support for the assault on the village of Flers.” The museum’s article places that mission inside the opening of the Flers-Courcelette attack, the first use of tanks in combat during the Somme offensive.
The tank did its first work before the day turned against it. “After this initial success, Daredevil was hit by artillery fire and knocked out,” the museum writes. In his daughter’s telling, her father cleared the trenches before the tank’s starboard rear track sprocket “was hit by a flying barrage from his own artillery.”
The museum’s page records two versions of what happened to the crew. The museum’s own narrative says the crew escaped unharmed. Dr. Mortimore’s account, on the same page, says: “The crew got out and some were injured, but not seriously.” The museum adds that “D1 was abandoned on the battlefield.”
After Daredevil
The battle did not end Mortimore’s war. The Tank Museum says he was gassed twice and eventually sent home. He later became a businessman and served in local government in Hertfordshire, and he served in the Home Guard during the Second World War. He died in 1967, per the museum.
The family kept a link to the machine. Dr. Mortimore, born in 1950, was christened Matilda, the museum says, after the nickname given to the “female” Mark I tanks. She visited Bovington to see the type of tank her father had commanded, and the museum published her memories alongside its account of the action.
The record that survives in the museum’s article is a precise one: a single tank, a 5:15 a.m. start on Sept. 15, 1916, a task against Delville Wood and Flers, and a tank knocked out by artillery fire and left on the field as D1.
Top image: A British Mark I “male” tank, C-15, near Thiepval on Sept. 25, 1916, 10 days after D1 Daredevil went into action. Image Credit: Ernest Brooks — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.