Dorset Museums 1- Bovington Tank museum

Humanising the inhumane.

Watching Jeremy Paxman's recent WW1 documentary brought to mind my recent trip to the Dorset Tank Museum.
I'm not a macho type and lost every playground fight, but even I found it riveting.
There are tanks of every shape, size and colour, housed in several purpose built hangars. If you can put aside the use to which they were put they possess a brutal, sculptural quality.

OUCH! 1

Amongst its many exhibits, the museum possesses examples of the very first tank. In 1916 when these top secret weapons first appeared on the Somme, militarised warfare entered a new chapter. War will always remain barbaric and crude despite advances in technology and if the tank terrified the Hun they were equally terrifying to the unfortunate crews operating  inside them.

OUCH! 2

Inside these lumbering beasts a three man crew shared their cramped, claustrophobic conditions with the enormous engine in a terrifying maelstrom of noise and fumes. (Half of all deaths in tanks in the WWI were, in fact, from carbon monoxide poisoning).

WW1 Tank crews mask

Often it is the smaller items in a museum which paint the biggest picture...The item above, looking more medieval  than 20thC, provided crews with questionable  protection from  the razor-sharp metal splinters that sliced through the confined space after a hit. Needless to say, the Tommies generally preferred to take their chance rather than to actually wear them.
The museum also has an atmospheric reconstruction of a wartime trench as well as a special exhibit about the conflict in Afghanistan.

www.tankmuseum.org