During the tank assault upon Fontaine Notre Dame 23 Nov 1917 C47 Conquerer II was disabled in the village street. On fire inside and out and under intense enemy fire there seemed little hope for the crew. However, C48 Caesar came to her assistance and pulled alongside. Members of her crew jumped out and although exposed to the German fire helped the stricken crew of Conquerer into Caesar. Caesar fought her way clear of the village with sixteen persons on board, the majority wounded. The drawing is my interpretation of the event.

Excellent work Eric. Great attention to detail. Particularly like the 'pings' as the german bullets hit the ground. Rotring pen?

More!

Regards,
EoB.

Absolutely fantastic work Eric. Funnily enough have just been editing the section of my novel that deals, in very small measure admittedly, with the actions at Fontaine. Had to edit quite a lot of it but seeing this I wish I hadn't!

Sometimes I really wish I had the visual artistic touch, I really do.

Charles, many thanks for the comments. The pens used were Eddings 0.5. and 0.1 although I did find even this to be a little too heavy for the effect I was after. I used to have rotrings years ago but unfortunately my nearest supplier didn't have them in when I needed a relacement.

Gunboat, again thanks for the supportive reply. I've a large number of books and photos that I scour for reference when trying to compose these things and sometimes it can be difficult to get unrelated pieces to complement each other so the final result looks right. I did struggle with some aspects of this drawing and no little correction was required at times (a real pain when using ink) but in the end I'm reasonably pleased with the result.

Abraham, similarly your comments are much appreciated. A couple of months back I stumbled upon a site related to Blackburn that commemorated John Rimmer of C47 who who was killed during this event. www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?pageid=4833&language=eng This inspired me to illustrate the action. I've since learnt much more about the tank assault on Fontaine and it certainly captures the imagination....crews fighting desperately through a restrictive urban environment without infantry support. I recently read Ian Verrinder's book Re: 'B' batalion and the caualty list Ian produced for that battalion alone speaks volumes about the heroism of the tank crews.

thanks again, ET

ET nicely summed up and your drawing is just what I would have thought the action in the village was like from my reading. Well done.

Excellent picture - you have made it look like hell on earth.

This is great too, I like your style