After graduation, he served in the Army, for nine months as a regular officer in the Royal Tank Regiment on a Short Service Limited Commission and four years in the Territorial Army.
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The Royal Engineers stationed there constructed two per day; between April and June 1941, they were able to build three dummy Royal Tank Regiments, and another in November that same year.
Hotblack was commissioned into the Royal Norfolk Regiment in 1915 and served in the First World War as an intelligence officer in France before transferring to the then "Heavy Branch" of the Machine Gun Corps (later the Royal Tank Corps) in 1916.
These were introduced by Darryl Winkler in an effort to engender an esprit de corps within his squadron – and echoed the all black look of the British Royal Tank Regiment (although the appearance of Frank Sinatra in the 1965 film Von Ryan's Express readily springs to mind).