It is synonymous with the Great War and a tragedy that saw a million men on both sides either killed or wounded.

It is, of course, the Battle of the Somme.

Not only did the 141-day First World War offensive make the headlines and the history books as the bloodiest chapter in the British Army, but the Somme was also when the British employed tanks for the first time in history.

Now recently-published papers have revealed how an Essex-born soldier - Major Allen Holford-Walker - was actually one of first men to command tanks on the Somme. Allen’s papers, which include photos, diaries and letters, have been published by the National Army Museum in London and reveal how the British struggled to make the most of their new weapon.

Allen was a Scottish Infantry soldier who had been born in Southend in January 1890.

As a tank commander he was involved in planning how tanks could be used at the Battle of the Ancre, the final British attack of the Somme. Allen fought in both the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (September 15-22, 1916) and the Battle of Ancre (November 13-18, 1916) and his papers give a first-hand account of the earliest days of tank warfare.

The development of the tank had been a closely- guarded secret as the British Army tried to find a mechanical solution to trench warfare.

Extensive trials had proved successful and 100 machines were ordered. Men recruited from across the Army learnt how to operate the tank in secret training camps at Bisley and later at Elveden in Suffolk which were overseen by Allen.

He commanded C Company of the new tank corps and recruited his younger brother Archie (also known as Bruce) to captain one of his tank crews.

On July 26, 1916, King George V inspected the tanks at Elveden and rode in the tank commanded by Archie Holford-Walker. At Archie’s request, the driver gave the King a bumpy ride!

By the end of July 1916, the British commander-in-chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, had decided that the first group of tanks would go to France to assist in the Somme offensive.

In August 1916, Allen’s company secretly made their way to France, and conducted covert training well behind the lines. However, he felt that his men and machines were unprepared for battle. Both Allen and his brother Archie found the tanks to be very unreliable. Of the three tanks under Archie’s command, one broke down, one suffered damage and one ran out of petrol and needed re-fuelling by the brothers.

When the attack started, only 15 of the 49 tanks available were able to move into no-man’s-land. In Allen’s post-war assessment of the attack, he wrote that the element of surprise had been wasted, and that the tank crews had been thrown into battle without adequate training.

In September, artillery and infantry were working together, with troops advancing behind the creeping barrage. But at Flers large gaps were left in the bombardment and in other battles infantry overtook the slow moving tanks and found themselves trapped in heavy machine gun fire, suffering heavy losses.

At Ancre it was decided that tanks would follow the infantry. As Allen’s papers show, it was emphasised in instructions to troops that ‘the Infantry would not wait for the tanks.’ This meant that the tanks would instead be used to mop up the infantry but the machines themselves were slow, cumbersome and prone to technical problems.

In the glutinous November Somme mud, they were vulnerable to getting stuck, which Allen records as fateful: “I attribute the fact of the tanks failing to gain their objective to the extraordinary bad ground they had to cross which was worse than I imagined possible.”

The new tanks and their inexperienced crews were ultimately ineffective at Ancre. A breakthrough was very nearly achieved with the groundbreaking vehicles at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, where tanks were first used on a mass scale. However, by 1918 the tank ensured final Allied victory as it became part of a complex all arms battle-plan, which combined the new vehicles with aircraft, artillery and infantry tactics.

Dr Peter Johnson, collections development and review manager at the National Army Museum, said, “Major Allen Holford-Walker’s papers demonstrate how the British were forced to develop a whole new set of battle tactics for the newly-invented tank.

“The British Army were under great pressure to adapt and innovate a way to break the bloody stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front.

“It was the lessons learned on the battlefield by soldiers like Allen Holford-Walker, often at great cost, that paved the way for later Allied victories in 1918.”

After the Battle of Ancre, Allen returned to England and was awarded the Military Cross in the New Year’s Honours of 1917 for his bravery in France. He later moved to Kenya with his wife and family where they bought a farm. Allen briefly returned to England during the Second World War.

Being too old to fight he advised at the Colonial Office and led passive air defence in Scotland. He died in April 1949. One hundred years after the first tanks arrived on the Somme Allen’s grandson has served with the Royal Hussars and his greatgrandson serves with the Royal Armoured Corps in Bovington, Dorset.

Visit First World War in Focus at www.nam.ac.uk/ww1 to discover more of Allen’s story and to find out about the heroes and history of the Somme.