The Crème de Menthe, a 'male' tank commanded by Captain Arthur Inglis, was more formally known as C-5 of C Company, Heavy Section, Machine Gun Company. The dramatic appearance of the tanks certainly had a traumatic effect on the already shell-shocked Germans.
A man came running in from the left, shouting, 'There is a crocodile crawling into our lines!' The poor wretch was off his head. He had seen a tank for the first time and had imagined this giant of a machine, rearing up and dipping down as it came, to be a monster. It presented a fantastic picture, this Colossus in the dawn light. One moment its front section would disappear into a crater, with the rear section still protruding, the next its yawning mouth would rear up out of the crater, to roll slowly forward with terrifying assurance.
-Feldwebel Weinert, 211th Infantry Regiment, Germany Army.
Excerpt from The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart, p. 382.