author
Richard Haigh
b. 1895
A young British tank officer turned his World War I service into a vivid firsthand memoir, capturing the danger, novelty, and dark humor of one of the war’s newest weapons. His writing offers a close-up view of early tank warfare while it was still being invented in battle.
1 Audiobook
Life in a Tank
by Richard Haigh
About the author
Born in 1895, Richard Haigh is best known for Life in a Tank, a memoir published in 1918 during the First World War. Contemporary library and book records identify him as the author of that work and show it was written from the perspective of a serving officer.
The book presents Haigh as a lieutenant who transferred from the 2nd Royal Berkshire Regiment into the Tank Corps after tanks first appeared on the battlefield in 1916. Editions of the book describe him as a captain in the Tank Corps and note that he held the Military Cross, which helps explain the authority and immediacy readers often feel in his account.
Very little biographical detail about his life beyond his wartime service was easy to confirm from reliable public sources. What is clear is that Life in a Tank has endured as a valuable personal record of early armored warfare, blending memoir, observation, and the day-to-day reality of fighting in a new kind of machine.