When that year war broke out, Jacques Quellennec was drafted as an infantry sergeant, witnessed most men of his unit being slaughtered during the First Battle of the Marne and was then severely wounded at the end of October.

[8][9] Among the onlookers were General Philippe Pétain, and Colonel Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne — an artillery man and engineer held in very high regard throughout the army for his unmatched technological and tactical expertise.

[6] On 11 December Estienne let a certain lieutenant Thibier draw a sketch of two conceptions: the one of a Baby Holt chassis fitted at the front and the back with auxiliary rollers, to improve the trench-crossing capacity; the other of an elongated suspension protected by side armour.

[6] On 20 December Estienne, on leave in Paris, together with Ferrus visited Louis Renault in Boulogne-Billancourt, in vain trying to convince the car producer to get involved in the production of the new weapon system.

[6] This is put into perspective by his limited involvement in its technical design;[6] as early as January 1916 the actual completion was entrusted to a ministerial bureau headed by General Léon Augustin Jean Marie Mourret, director of the Army automobile service.

Two Baby Holt tractors, part of the order of fifteen by Schneider on 21 September 1915, and property of the French State, were during two weeks from 2 February onwards in an army workshop combined into a single elongated vehicle, a caterpillar offensif allongé, by Lieutenant Charles Fouché, assisted by a small team of mechanics.

[19] A gun-towing tractor (remorqueur), based on the CA chassis and produced in 1918, was designated Schneider CD,[20] and a prototype porteur variant of it, intended to carry a heavy artillery piece, the CD3.

[23] The cannon type was developed from a 75 mm trench mortar that had been adapted to fire from a fixed fortification position by adding a recoil compensator and a gun shield; in this configuration it weighed 210 kg (460 lb).

The lower profile of the tails is curved, allowing the vehicle to gradually raise itself above a trench floor, until its centre of gravity shifts over the edge causing its hull to suddenly tumble forward.

At first, by the Section Camouflage in the field a specially designed complex striped flame pattern was added consisting of narrow vertical red brown, dark green and yellow ochre patches, delineated in black.

The original grey paint was perhaps only partly covered, including it in the ensemble; an alternative interpretation of the lightest patches seen in black-and-white photographs is that it represents a light green hue.

After it had become clear that the French industry did not have the spare capacity to meet those demands and that they far out-reached the possibilities of domestic production, it was decided to produce the smaller, cheaper and more modern FIAT 3000 (a copy of the Renault FT) instead, three of which had been received in May 1918.

From the 245th vehicle onwards an automatic starter was installed, engaged by a handle,[29] as the original manual system did not allow for a sufficiently quick response to a changing battlefield situation.

Even without the spaced armour, the front plates would have been immune against K-bullet fire from a distance of two hundred metres, because they were angled at 60°,[11] providing an effective line-of-sight thickness of 22.8 mm (0.90 in).

When lifted by means of a steel cable operable from the inside via a grooved small vertical plate located on the front of the skylight roof, it indicated the position of the tank to friendly observers from behind.

[41] At Marly the crews received their first instruction consisting of the basics of maintenance and a lot of driver training with an emphasis on crossing trenches, avoiding shell craters and running down trees and walls.

In December 1916 Robert Nivelle had been appointed supreme French commander on the promise that his tactical innovation of the "rolling barrage" would ensure a quick collapse of the German front.

In the early evening, fresh infantry units together with the tanks conquered a sector of the third trench, marking the high tide of the French progress during the entire Second Battle of the Aisne.

[56] On a positive note, twenty broken-down tanks had been salvaged from the battlefield, all enemy infantry assaults had failed, and the spaced armour proved to be very resistant, beyond expectations, against small-arms fire and shell splinters.

Coordination with the artillery was improved by attaching a special observation plane, protected by six SPAD VII fighters, that had to identify German antitank-batteries and have them destroyed by counterbattery fire; it also had to report the position of the tanks to higher command levels.

The Schneiders, advancing not in column but "line abreast", exploited the initial infantry conquest of the first trench by crossing the second and then assisted the foot soldiers in heavy and fluid battles with counterattacking German reserves.

Salvaging them proved difficult as thunderstorms made the surface of the in itself firm chalkstone of the area very slippery and the terrain was rough, dotted with ruins and intersected by ravines and quarries.

However, remaining purely inactive would undermine the morale; to bolster it a series of meticulously prepared small-scale offensives were undertaken in which success was guaranteed by deploying an overwhelming numerical superiority, especially in artillery, to conquer a limited objective.

Their continued importance became obvious when the French plans were on 21 March, at which date 245 Schneider tanks were operational,[63] disrupted by the German spring offensive, a massive infantry onslaught made possible by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk allowing Germany to shift the bulk of its forces to the Western Front.

Considering that tank units would not only attack static enemy positions but also had to manoeuvre on the battlefield against moving hostile troops, he foresaw that their commanders would need more agile vehicles with armament and armour concentrated in the front, to lead a pursuit or cover a retreat.

[24] In February 1917, Schneider proposed to build a variant with a thirty-two centimetres wider hull fitted in the front with a 47 mm gun and two machine-gun turrets placed diagonally behind the driver position, while the engine was relocated to the rear of the vehicle.

All had in common that basically the same mechanical components were used as with the Schneider CA, though often improved, and that the suspension was only partially changed: elongated by the addition of an eighth road wheel and using thirty-five instead of thirty-three wider, forty-five centimetres broad, track links.

[74] During discussions about these proposals, Estienne pointed out that the intended long 47 mm gun had not entered production yet and that no high performance explosive charge was available to give it a sufficient effect on soft targets.

[79] Later that year, in an official answer to an inquiry by parliamentarian Paul Doumer regarding the progress achieved within French tank development, the designation "Schneider CA4" is used to indicate a design studied within the context of a larger order for two prototypes, weighing twenty tonnes and fitted with a cannon turret armed with the shortened 75 mm gun, and of which Schneider is unable to predict when the single prototype to be constructed would be finished, though deliveries could start in April 1918.

[79] The new medium tank project had already been started on 15 August 1917 and strived for a technically advanced seventeen tonne vehicle armed with a shortened 75 mm gun and benefiting from a much improved mobility.