New Zealand soldiers posing for a photograph with a captured German Tank Gewehr, August 25, 1918. This photograph, colourised by Colourised PIECE of JAKE , was taken today 104 years ago during the Second Battle of the Somme (1918). Today I'll write about the German "Mauser Tankgewehr M1918", usually just called the T-Gewehr (Tank Rifle), the first ever designated anti-tank rifle in the history of warfare, and the only one used in the First World War. By June 1917, the British were deploying the Mark IV tanks on the battlefield, and the Germans discovered their standard armour-piercing bullets were no longer effective at putting them out of action. Not even their MG-08 machine-guns could pierce the British tanks and hand-grenades and artillery were too unreliable to stop a tank advancing directly towards a German trench. Following the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, in which the British really demonstrated the potential of their tanks to break the trench stalemate, the...